Ben Bostick kicks off the album
with “No Show Blues,” a great, angry bluesy country rock tune tackling some of
those timeless blues and country themes – a crummy job and a mean woman. And, of
course, drinking. “I’m gonna go to the
bank and cash out my account/Drive straight to the tavern and drink a
disgusting amount.” Man, sometimes that sounds so appealing, particularly
these days, when our country is being run by racist morons. Check out the keys
during the instrumental section. “I had a
job in the valley, but I doubt I do anymore/I took a day off and then I took four
more.” There is a bit of a Springsteen sound to the vocals on this track.
That’s followed by “Hellfire,” the album’s title track, a playful country tune
with a lot of attitude. And there is more drinking. Hey, if you’re like me,
you’ve been drinking heavily since November 2016. I love the lines about the
church, where once he feels free of sin, he starts drinking: “So I stumbled into church and sat down for a
spell/A few minutes in, I felt free of sin, so I polished off my bottle of
bathtub gin/And got stinking, dirty, awful drunk as hell.” After all, who wants to feel too clean and
holy? It just won’t do, not these days when Nazis wander the land in red
baseball caps. (Remember, friends, Nazis are still the enemies of the United
States, and should be treated as such.) Have I mentioned how cool his voice is?
His voice fits in with that great tradition of country outlaws. Listen to him
on “No Good Fool”; his voice is low, strong, without artifice or bullshit. “So you say you like bad boys/Well, run away
while you can/I told you I ain’t no bad boy/I’m a bad, bad man.”
“Blow Off Some Steam” is
fantastic fun, coming at you at a fast pace, with some wonderful work on guitar.
Plus, I seriously dig that stuff on keys. This track features some playful
vocal work, with a sort of stutter. “I
got to blow off some steam before I b-b-b-b-blow up/I’ve been holding it in
through the whole work week.” Shit, a lot of us have been holding it in
since the 2016 election. That’s followed by another totally enjoyable tune, “It
Ain’t Cheap Being Poor.” Sure, it’s a song about struggling financially, but it
is a lot of fun, one to get you tapping your feet. “Well, it ain’t cheap being poor, and I can’t take any more/Of the tickets
and the taxes and the fees/I work hard for my pay, then they take it away.”
And, yes, there is more cool work on keys. Then “Tornado” is about a woman who
comes along and changes the man’s life, and not for the better. “Well, I lost my job and all of my money/Most of my friends and half of my
mind.” And the story takes place here in Los Angeles, beginning on a hazy
day. Ah, you know just exactly what he’s talking about. “I want to hate her, but I love her instead.”
Things go wrong in “The Other
Side Of Wrong” too, which is basically a list of mistakes and woes. It also
includes the line, “But if I didn’t make
bad decisions, I wouldn’t make no decisions at all,” a variation of the old
“bad luck” line. There is something of a Bo Diddley beat at times. Then “Work,
Sleep, Repeat” employs that familiar western rhythm, like a horse trotting
along casually. What is it about that rhythm that always makes smile? I think a
lot of us can relate to these lyrics: “Work,
sleep, work, sleep, that’s all I ever do anymore (work, sleep, work, sleep,
work, sleep)/Somewhere up the line I forgot what I was working for/There goes
life, looks like it ain’t slowing down for me.” The album concludes with “The
Outsider,” a solid, thumping, rocking song. “Yeah, I’m on the outside but I ain’t looking in/What everybody’s doing
really ain’t that interesting/Yeah, I’m on the outside but that ain’t far
enough.”
CD Track List
- No Show Blues
- Hellfire
- No Good Fool
- Blow Off Some Steam
- It Ain’t Cheap Being Poor
- Tornado
- The Other Side Of Wrong
- Work, Sleep, Repeat
- How Much Lower Can I Go
- Feeling Mean
- The Outsider
Hellfire was released on June 29, 2018.
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