Artist:     Micky & The Motorcars

Album:     Long Time Comin’

Label:     Thirty Tigers

Release Date:     11.1.2019

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In the eyes of some music snobs I could mention but won’t, country music is the bumpkin of the family: sweet and occasionally amusing, but not the one you turn to for heavy lifting. Those guys should listen to Micky & the Motorcars and learn something about good music.

Brothers Micky and Gary Braun trade lead vocals and songwriting duties, but it’s a very cohesive album, unlike some efforts where we get the impression that the artists took turns showing off their chops. The opener, “Road to You,” with its slap-the-steering-wheel beat, sets up the album nicely. Naming towns and counties on the long winter drive, the lyrics bring a fresh take to the time-honored theme of finally heading home: “These New Year’s blues are like breaking in boots/I got blisters nobody can see.”

Musing on a life in pursuit of success, they sing “I should thank my mother’s god for giving her some faith in me. You don’t have to see it to believe it.” Kind of puts an insightful light on the trickledown effect of Sundays in church, doesn’t it? And later, “In the end, we’re all searching for the same thing: Throw your heart in the river and hope it sees the ocean some day.”

Backed by an excellent studio band, both the country sound and country themes (rodeos, small towns, drinking, one-night stands) are familiar, but delivered here with such precision and fresh insight that you’d think those subjects had never been addressed. Kudos to drummer Fred Eltringham, whose rhythms are as compelling as the lyrics.

Four years in the making, this fine album was worth the wait. (Just don’t take that long again, guys.)

—Suzanne Cadgène