Born to Howl

Album Review

Their first album got a nice publicity push by virtue of the band's association with crime novelist Elmore Leonard, who wrote them into his music-biz novel Be Cool, but the Stone Coyotes unload a potent wallop that stands quite wonderfully on its own merits, which their third offering again goes a long way towards proving. Put plainly, the trio makes an awesomely raw, stripped-down rock & roll racket. The guitar riffs on the overdriven numbers do indeed bare a much publicized kindred spirit to those of AC/DC, and the pop-and-son rhythm section is awesomely boozy like ZZ Top. The metronomic thwap of Doug Tibbles coupled with progeny John's grumbling-blues bass grooves is rock at its very purest and most urgent. Punk, really, if you think about it. And all due respect to Bon Scott, Brian Johnson, and the be-bearded Texans, but none of them have the cool, sexy croon of Barbara Keith. As bold as it might be to claim, neither band comes up with hooks as tasty as hers either, nor lyrics (stripped of their machismo but not their swagger) that have as much of an impact. Nor have those units ever shown the ability to toss off the odd slow-burning cover (Dolly Parton's "Jolene") or pretty, poignant ballad ("Detroit or Buffalo," which originally found a home on one of Keith's two early-'70s solo albums). In many ways the band flies in the face of conventional wisdom. At an age (which is to say middle-age) when most rockers this side of the Rolling Stones are either hanging up their leather pants or switching to a genre more conducive to maturity (say folk or country), Keith and Tibbles seem to be just hitting their stride, and they out-snarl musicians half their age. If you don't believe it, Keith tells you herself in "American Child," with a chorus as perfect and to the point as they come: "Give me Jerry Lee Lewis/Give me Joey Ramone." Elsewhere, the band writes a sort of sequel to "I Love Rock-n-Roll," which Joan Jett would be smart to snag. Born to Howl simply transforms four chords into rock nirvana.