Kentucky Headhunters Dixie Lullabies

Ever wonder why no one ever sings anymore about the budget delights of Boone’s Farm wine? Especially the strawberry flavored kind? Well the Kentucky Headhunters haven’t forgotten the small pleasures and cheap thrills that make life worth living, and so a mere one song into their terrific new album they deliver a deeply informed “Boones Farm Boogie,” all churning guitars and croaking, hungover vocals. Like their Georgia counterparts the Black Crowes, the Headhunters don’t make headlines like they once did, but they make better music than ever before—gritty, blues- infused hard country and southern rock with a snarling early-70s Stones twist. Witness the familiar groove, preacher-like exhortations, and mean-woman-blues text of the irresistible grinder “Tumblin’ Roses”; witness redoubtable lead guitarist Greg Martin’s clever insertion of Keef’s “Tumblin’ Dice” riff in setting up Doug Phelps’s plaintive country-blues lamentations in the thick-textured, heart- tugging sayonaras of “Roll On Little Pretty.” But these are mere touchstones: the Headhunters rock their way up country on their own terms, with their signature exhilarating high-octane thrust captured to a T in a rough-hewn soundscape messy and unrepentant, rather like these gents themselves.