Hank Williams III: Lovesick, Broke & Driftin' : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

It may be unfair to compare a young singer with his legendary kinfolk, but in Hank III's case, it's impossible not to do so. Like his father, Hank Williams Jr., this latest member of the infamous Williams clan writes his family's history smack into the music: He drinks, he smokes, he hurts, and he's damn proud of it. If Hank III gets stoned and sings all night long, well . . . as his daddy once said, it's a family tradition.

On his second album, Lovesick, Broke and Driftin', Hank III gets wasted on nearly every track and then chalks it up to his legacy. "I can't help the way that I am," he sings in the slow, gospel-like "Whiskey, Weed and Women," and over the country-blues of "Mississippi Mud," he brags, "I take my shot straight out of a jug, and I like to get pure drunk in the Mississippi mud." Elsewhere, Hank III kills his love pangs with five shots of the hard stuff, yodels away his troubles and calls himself a "drinkin', smokin', nighttime ramblin' kind of man."

Hank III's first album, Risin' Outlaw, displayed more of his legendary grandfather's lonesome moan than it did the swagger of his father's outlaw-country sound. Lovesick finds the youngest Hank moving even further into Grandpa's shadows, with a raw, acoustic sound replacing the slicker, Nashville- ish production of his debut. There's more Hawaiian dreaminess in the steel guitars, more railroad chug in the acoustic guitars, more rockabilly thump in the bass and more whine in Hank's vocals.

Most important, Hank III writes all but one song (Bruce Springsteen's "Atlantic City") this time around. And that's where things go south. While poignant tracks like the folky "Cecil Brown" display the sweet melancholy associated with his grandfather's work, Hank III is hardly the songwriter that Hank I was. That wouldn't be worth mentioning if his sound didn't conjure the ghost of Hank Sr. so scrupulously: When Hank III's songwriting gets lazy, as it does on a few of the tracks, the weakest lines ("I'm still here drinking over the good ol' days/When I had my gal and everything was OK") stand out like a mohawk at a rodeo.

Still, it took Hank Jr. twelve years and thirtysome albums to find his own voice, but when he found it, he became a major force in country and rock. At the rate Hank III is going, we won't have to wait nearly as long to hear his best work.