| Sounds Like | Shootin' Pains have a new CD, Pray Like Crazy. Here's what the critics are saying!
Shootin' Pains-
Pray Like Crazy 
Every great bar needs a wizened codger who belches forth beery invective against the status quo. Shootin' Pains has five of them. "Goat Fuckin' Psycho-Ameracommunist Folk Rock" is how they describe themselves, but that's an understatement given that the Austin quintet comes armed with Dicks veterans Buxf Parrott on banjo and Pat Deason on drums. The grizzled, slapdash demeanor of their railings against war, heartbreak, consumerism, and the workaday world makes 'em custom-warped for drunken ears. Guitarist Mark Kenyon's "My Great Downfall" chronicles the imprisonment of a ne'er-do-well turned in by a double-crossing love interest who's on the "path to God," while guitarist Todd Kassens' "Old Man Drinking Alone" is a poignant death waltz about the stranger at the end of the bar. Thankfully, Pray Like Crazy ends with "Lake McQueeney," a knee-slapping narrative about a near-arrest for drunken paddle boating. If there's such a thing as punk rock aging gracefully, these Shootin' Pains don't need no doctor. (Wednesday, March 12, Elysium, 12mid.)
***1/2 Greg Beets, Austin Chronicle
Nothing’s held sacred on the Shootin’ Pains sophomore LP, Pray Like Crazy. The local quintet unloads scathing country parodies that take on everything from religion to Big Oil to your cell phone. But that’s what you might expect from a twang group that includes two former members of formidable punk icons the Dicks - Buxf Parrott on banjo and Pat Deason on drums. The songs are hilarious, dark, and shot through with rotgut whiskey, the odd juxtaposition of familiar folk and country melodies with scathing contempt serving to accentuate everything that’s wrong with contemporary society. From the opening line of “Half Pint” (“There was a time when I was down on my luck, no fortune no fame and I just didn’t give a fuck”) delivered over a dark gypsy rhythm, it’s clear the Shootin’ Pains don’t really give a shit what you think.
There’s a definite nod to the Pogues in much of their sound, and though they don’t usually try to levy the same kind of emotional disillusion as some of Shane MacGowan’s best, they have the drinking and political disgust down to perfection. Barroom odes like “Old Man Drinking Alone” and, especially, “The Barstool Next Door” both touch on the Irish inflections while cutting them with Texas flavor, the former a delicate waltz and latter delivering a ballad of fallen “Port Aransas lass.” “My Great Downfall” meanwhile lilts into the chorus with the banjo affectionately licking at the prison bars.
The songwriting is fairly evenly split between all members save bassist Tom Fairchild, but they all nonetheless seem to be on the same distinct page. None of the vocals are particularly good, all of them scratchy and continually faltering slightly off-key, rather intentional or not. But the singing also fits the style fairly well, Parrot’s grating nasal smirk on “Voodoo Doll” appropriately disturbing, as is Todd Kassens’ slightly unhinged low dirge on “Shady,” and Mark Kenyon’s extreme twang on songs like “The Mission.”
Never short on contempt, the Shootin’ Pains take on technology in “Cell Phone” (“Your computer is the only thing that’s keeping you alive!), the Iraq War on “War Song” (“Wage a war of fear and hate, kill them all before it’s too late, put a ribbon on your SUV”), big oil in “Have a Nice Day” (“Supply and demand dictate the price, while the CEO’s live an obscene life”), and corporate America in the hilarious “No Worky” (“I ain’t gonna work for you no more, gonna lay down this hammer in the back of your head”). Perhaps the best, and most amusing, is the purportedly true paddle boat DUI tale of “Lake McQueeny,” served up as an outlaw ballad and worth the entire album. Shootin’ Pains are difficult to take too seriously, but that may be precisely why we need their brand of irreverence and no-limits commentary so badly these days.
Austin Sound
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SHOOTIN' PAINS- MEAN OLD MOON 
File the first full-length from Austin's Shootin' Pains right near the gonzo country of the last couple singles by San Fran's Dils, right before they morphed into Rank and File. This is country/folk gone beserk with lots of barbed social commentary, alcoholic daydreams, and funny asides. As a kind of radical roots spinoff from Austin punk legends the Dicks and the Punkaroos (singer/writers Mark Kenyon [guitar] and Buxf Parrott [bass] contribute most of the songwriting) there's plenty of outsider themes in these songs, which cast an apocalyptic and nihilistic eye, respectively, in "Cities in Flames" and Todd Kassen's "I Don't Care", the latter of which turns the Ramones song of the same name inside out ("I don't care if you go to church/ when you still act like a jerk".) The centerpiece is "Outside of Life," which with its picture of both fierce individualism and of pathos and disconnectedness, cuts both ways, and is emblemtic of how powerful this band can be. Meanwhile, the music ebbs between jangly balladry, bluegrass- tinted tracks, and the more rambunctious honky-tonk of "She's Not Your Baby." And you just gotta love a song called "Nobody Knows Nuthin'"..
Luke Torn, Pop Culture Press, Fall '05
SHOOTIN' PAINS- MEAN OLD MOON
get a load of the Shootin' Pains, the Dicks minus Gary Floyd and electricity but with punk nihilism to spare. "I don't care if you go to church when you still act like a jerk" won't win them many friends in the Bible Belt, but like the song says, "I Don't Care." The rest of Mean Old Moon is just as crotchety and critical, "An American/My God" especially, and closes with a fine bit of Celtic swagger on "Drink and Fight"..........
Christopher Gray, Austin Chronicle, 11/11/05
SHOOTIN’ PAINS- MADMAN’S DIARY EP
Austin punk lore takes a turn for the weird here (would you expect any less?), as ex-Dicks Buxf Parrott and Pat Deason team up with Punkaroos guitarist Mark Kenyon, ex-Shoulder Todd Kassens, and Tom Fairchild on this all this all-too-brief trip towards the mustier corners of dark Americana, Johnny Cash style. A creepy fatalism marks songs like “10,000 Miles,” not far away from tone and sound from Appalachian hillbilly music of decades ago. There’s plenty of humor among the hard-won truths here, too, as in “T’s 4 Texas,” where the protagonist is none the worse for wear despite doing hoosegow time for an auto breakdown on Interstate 35. Even more impressive is “Madman’s Diary,” a rattling, guitar-driven meditation less concerned with death than what the dead man left behind. And it’s safe to say that “Parasite/Host” manages to put a rare new spin on drinkin’ songs- how often can you say that? Perhaps a full elpee proper, boys?
Luke Torn, Pop Culture Press |
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