Bobby Bare Jr.’s Young Criminals Starvation League, The Longest Meow (Blood Shot)

 

Another roots-rock post-modernist, Bare, Jr. comes from pure country stock—son of Bobby “Detroit City” Bare—but here he’s backed by members of My Morning Jacket. For the most part, they play a gentle, lovely version of country rock, but when songs need to veer afield from the Nashville sound, he and the band are happy to go there. When he performed as simply Bare, Jr., the band was raucous and hard; since he has played as the Young Criminals Starvation League, the songs and his vocals are more delicate. The American roots music traditions he flirts with give his odd imagination and contemporary visions an unusual context—the uneasy frisson of Now and Then existing side by side. Telling cover: the Pixies’ “Where is My Mind.”