BR5-49: This Is BR5-49 : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Nashville's BR5-49 began as a country-western bar band so determined to reproduce the classic sounds of fiddles and steel guitars their sound almost collapsed under the weight of its own history. But the power-pop thesis statement of the thirty-six-minute This Is BR5-49, the quintet's third studio album, is far less intimidating. On bright, hopped-up rockabilly songs, personable singer-guitarists Chuck Mead and Gary Bennett lead a tight honky-tonk rhythm section through such touchstones as the Everly Brothers ("The Price of Love"), Rockpile (a superb version of "Play That Fast Thing (One More Time)") and NRBQ's Al Anderson ("Look Me Up"). The originals, like Mead's opening "Too Lazy to Work, Too Nervous to Steal" and Bennett's "While You Were Gone," still skew twangy, but overall, the only things distinguishing This Is BR5-49 from the rocking Dave Edmunds-Nick Lowe joints of the late Seventies are those fiddles and steel guitars.

STEVE KNOPPER
(June 25, 2001)