Brent Amaker
has obviously listened to a lot of
Johnny Cash
records, and his cavernous, cigarette-and-whisky baritone makes good use of the plainspoken vocal style that made his hero a force of nature. His tone is deeper than
Cash
's and sounds like it could loosen the nails in the hardwood floor of a Saturday night honky tonk, but
Amaker
's take on country has more going on than a simple tribute to
the Man in Black
. There are traces of
Nick Cave
and
Leonard Cohen
in his delivery and while the music is undeniably country,
Brent Amaker and the Rodeo
pepper their style with plenty of hard rock, rockabilly, post-punk, spaghetti Western, and new wave influences.
"Johnny's Theme"
sets the tone for the rest of the album with an instrumental that rides a backbeat that has the energy of a railroad train roaring down a steep mountainside and plenty of surf twang, spaghetti Western ambience, and the crazed wailing of the bandmembers.
introduces himself on
"Man in Charge,"
a larger than life portrait of a badass just barely in control of himself. This is the kind of hyperbole that can sound embarrassing when done with a straight face, but
pulls it off with his ironic, reverb-soaked delivery. With the exception of
"Garden of Love,"
a slow, desperate love song with a dark edge, everything here is played with a measured mania that makes
's grim world-view shine like a dirty diamond. Highlights include
"U.S.A."
a Tex-Mex celebration of the country accented by boozy mariachi horns;
"Hammer Hits the Nail"
a macho hit driven by
Tiny Dancer
's jazzy surf guitar lead and
's snarling vocal; the rockabilly-flavored
"Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk"
; and
"Blood Dripping Blood,"
a country-rocker full of murder, mayhem, and, naturally, blood. It's another over the top performance, saved from excess by
's tongue-in-cheek performance. The vinyl edition of
Please Stand By
comes with a cover of
Kraftwerk
's
"Pocket Calculator"
and a bonus 24-page comic book/graphic novel that features plenty of sex, some of it with animals, drinking, and other demonic shenanigans. ~ j. poet