Artist: The Bottle Rockets
Album: Bit Logic
Label: Bloodshot Records
Release Date: 10.12.18
Forgive the Bottle Rockets for feeling out of step with the times. More aligned with the crusty, unshaven outlaw country crowd than the slick, pop-obsessed hucksters of Nashville’s upper crust, Brian Henneman and company roll on with their 13th album Bit Logic, where their reliable brand of gutsy, Midwestern roots-rock sticks up for humanity in a modern age seemingly hell-bent on destroying it.
As the advancing march of technology threatens to consume every last vestige of individuality and political discord tears the country asunder, the Bottle Rockets are defiant in a low-key retreat to the warm, sunny embrace of Americana’s past. With a big, bounding backbeat and tricky runs of polished electric guitar picking, “Knotty Pine” and “Stovall’s Grove” revisit the Bakersfield sound of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, while the careening rockabilly of an infectious and blustery “Highway 70 Blues” could be arrested for speeding.
Were it necessary, producer Eric “Roscoe” Ambel, a longtime Bottle Rockets co-conspirator, would probably bail them out of jail, no questions asked. As it is, Ambel uses his talents to flesh out Bit Logic with smart touches of guitar, keyboards and vocals, as Henneman and his gruff voice find hope and optimism in the face of temporary defeat in an amiable “Maybe Tomorrow,” with its comfortable groove and sly hooks. Made of somewhat tougher stuff, the easygoing country-rock of “Human Perfection” is a burning shot of barroom wisdom chased with generous slide guitar, and the driving title track is an 18-wheeler with a load of hot alternative-country fluidly shifting gears as it flies down a wide-open interstate. The rest of the album drafts on its contagious spirit, although the dark, slinky “Doomsday Letter” – a different black cat altogether – is troubled and affecting.
Sympathy for those trying to find their way in this complicated brave new world is prevalent in the wry blue-collar poetry of Bit Logic, as the Bottle Rockets employed a more collaborative approach to its creation, with four co-written songs. The contributions of John Horton and his exquisite guitar work, as well as those of fluent bassist Keith Voegele and crackerjack drummer/percussionist Mark Ortmann, keep the band humming along at peak efficiency and creativity. After all, they’re all in this together.
—Peter Lindblad
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