Michael And The Lonesome Playboys
Album: Last Of The Honky Tonks
Label: Blackwater
Tracks: 14
Website: www.myspace.com/michaellonesomeplayboys

This remarkable album opens with 'The Last Honky Tonk' and closes with 'The World Ain’t what It Used To Be' both songs about the good ole days, and how much better they were - not an unprecedented theme in country music and surely an essential ingredient one would otherwise sorely miss (along with the good ole days): Both songs are wonderfully upbeat and toe-tappingly catchy, they are rock’n’roll with a twang, and the poetry in the lyrics. They'll hit a soft spot in any old school listener’s heart with references to (among others) rhinestone suits, inexpensive whiskey and Bobby McGee.

The album slows down briefly for some very cool and resonating bottleneck sliding blues of "When A Freight Train Rolls Right Over You" and "Low Down Poverty Blues" without neglecting the honkytonk beat or the authentic lyrics that make the whole album genuine.

In the true tradition of the honkytonk song there are also troublesome women and their causality with heavy drinking to be sung about, a task that Michael and the Lonesome Playboys master with witty lyrics 'Married By The Gospel/ Divorced By The Law', "Shambles" and "My Liver’s Bad/ My Life’s A Mess" with a comforting combination of the steel guitar and a rockabilly beat.

Alexander Kottenhahn