What happened to my rock and roll genes???

Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but I really have to wonder about this getting older thing. Seems my tastes have been inching closer and closer towards the country spectrum as the years have passed. None of that pop country, Tim McChaw crap though, mind you (more on that later). Rather, just some outlaw country (new and old), along with some twangy rock. With the full reviews to come once they're more fully digested...

New outlaw: Hank Williams III's Straight to Hell - just bad-ass hillbilly fun. Booze and women, tributes to country legends old and slams on wannabe 21st century cowboys (including daddy Jr.). The only thing missing is...aw, hell, I'm not gonna gripe one bit on this.

Old outlaw re-done: Jessi Colter's Out of the Ashes - to simply say Waylon'd be proud would be too easy (not to mention cliche). Don Was works the same magic he did with Iggy Pop, Paul Westerberg and the Stones with Colter, who rips into every song like she's been waiting the literal 20+ years since she last recorded. This one still hasn't had enough spins to say much more than that, but first impressions are pretty impressive.

New school (kinda country): Drive-By Truckers' A Blessing and a Curse - not really supposed to have this one yet, but suffice to semi-secretly say that this band keeps getting better and better. My life's in a much better olace than it was when they released the connected-with-far-too-easily Decoration Day a few years back and so are theirs, apparently. Lessons learned and triple-pronged songwriting from one of America's finest musical representatives.

Guess it all goes back to the following words I saw many moons ago on the Slobberbone list:

"There is a general place in your brain, I think, reserved for
'melancholy of relationships past.'  It grows and prospers as
life progresses, forcing you finally, against your better judgment,
to listen to country music." Kary Mullis - Nobel Prize Winner for Chemistry