RIBEYE BROTHERS
Bar Ballads and Cautionary Tales
Times Beach

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"I Tell Ya Son I Ain't Lyin' When I Said I'd Sell Your Soul For Another Drink" -'From The Floor'

"I'm starting to feel poor, instead of just broke..." -'Roberto Duran'

"Wake up - go to bed - in between put a gun to my head...
- 'Buffalo'

Glad tidings were borne to me whenst I received this CD revealing that the rather fantabulous Ribs had got it together and were still standing (just, it seems), teetering on tables and bingeing on the brink. Equally gladly they appear to have learnt absolutely nothing from their continuous drunk, blundering misadventures, apart from retaining their innate knack of making it back to narrate these nefarious notebooks from the end of some bar that Bukowski wouldn't have dared write about, never mind go in. The first bracing batch 'Nothing To Show You' and 'Roberto Duran' pull up a chair and invite a few old friends from the first album - 'If I Had A Horse I'd

.Buy It Oats And Fuck It' -  to take a seat and get a goddamn round in, bitch, namely 'P.W.I.' and 'Last Placed Champs' although through the haze '...Duran' manages to stumble stoned 'Inna Gadda Da Vida' mumbling hapahazard old 'Mats lyrics - 'I'm tired of everything I can afford' - while dawdling, dribbling tobacco juice and rye down their chins and vests into a slightly higher dosage of psyched-up garage haze than the first records more country fried corncob cruckle, with the Julian Cope-esque brilliantlysergic logic of 'We Became Snakes' ('It makes no difference what we do / Floating face down in the swimming pool'), and similarly illogical lysergic lunacy of the sweetly lilting space-country-comedown pop of 'Turpentine', the Elevators stampede of 'Buffalo' and 'Electric Chair' (you'll know when you buy this and hear 'em) mixed up in a crazy timewarp stun gun battle with ? And The Mysterians. Anthems for the downtrodden and wearily self-effacing slackers, without the affectations of Pavement and, gawd, I dunno, Superchump or whatever they were called. A refreshing, in a cheap cheroot smoking way, and wonderfully wry outlook on the pitfalls and shitstorms that are slung your way as you strive and slump through sorrow sodden puddles in your piss wet through holy-soled shoes. Brilliant, and quite medicinal. I'm off to bed.

As on the first records disclaimer about bands they've covered contacting them for their money, or better still their label, it only adds to their overall appeal to have a small print of 'unauthorized reproduction will be met with snubs, ridicule and litigation'.

"The last time I saw her go she politely stepped over me As I was passed out on the floor" -'Horn Of Plenty'

"How many dead ends can one man find..." -'Buffalo'
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-Stu Gibson