Risin' Outlaw : Hank Williams III : Review : Rolling Stone

They say the best and worst attributes skip a generation. In the case of Hank Williams III, he inherited all the bad stuff - the dog-eared defeatedness, scrappy-sad looks and anti-social attitude - that made his grandfather so damn good. The twenty-six-year-old's debut album is a collection of tough honky-tonk numbers with vintage nuthin'-to-lose themes - cocaine, guns, murder, "datin' the devil's daughter" and fine motels "with TVs and radios" - sung in mournful coyote yodels and desperate-mean drawls. The music is simple - fiddle, pedal steel guitar, a two-stepping beat - and is filtered through tinny, sparse production, making certain songs sound eerily like long-lost Hank I tracks. As modern Nashville suffocates under big-production decadence and alternative country strives to capture Gram Parsons' romantic essence, Hank III provides the white-trash kick in the ass that's been sorely missing - bad teeth, skinny legs and all.