NASHVILLE SKYLINE: Is Country Music Headed Straight to Heaven or Straight to Hell?

Hank III's "Hellbilly" music transports me totally back to the Texas honky tonks I eagerly dived into as a teenager with a fake ID. His rebellious, hell-raising persona has wearied a bit over the past couple of years, but the actual music here stands up very well. It opens on a high note with a short clip of the Louvin Brothers singing their old gospel song "Satan Is Real" that quickly descends into a demonic laugh. It's listed as "Satan Is Real/Straight to Hell Medley." But the first real, cut, "Thrown Out of the Bar," is good old-fashioned, steel-playing, slap-bass honky tonk music. "Pills I Took" and "Smoke and Wine" are a lot of fun. And there's a classic country shaggy-dog song with "My Drinkin' Problem" ("My drinkin' problem left today."). It closes with the thoroughly gorgeous "Angel of Sin," which is as good a country song as I have heard in a long time.As far as I know, though, this is the first album of country music ever to be slapped with a parental advisory sticker warning for "explicit content." And there is plenty of that explicit stuff here, all right. For example, "Dick in Dixie" is not about anyone named Dick. But there is still some pretty powerful country music here.The second CD of Hank III's set is entirely devoted to "Louisiana Stripes," a chaotic and disturbing -- but highly entertaining -- 45-minute descent into the abyss. It opens like a conventional prison song about wearing Louisiana stripes, but just after two minutes, we begin to hear the ominous stirrings of something much darker. Random sound effects, random voices, trains, distorted singing, howling and the like. There's a snippet of him singing his grandfather's "I Could Never Be Ashamed of You" and short versions of Hank III songs about death, betrayal, sin, salvation, murder and doom. If Frank Zappa had been a country singer, he might have produced something as effective as this.Hank III's musical schizophrenia is always on full display, allowing listeners to make of it what they will. He makes a big ado about professing to not care about what people think about him, but you have to wonder what he really thinks. A lot of care and attention went into this two-CD work. Like his grandfather, he has two musical sides. But his grandfather's two musical egos were divided between the trad country Hank Williams and the musical evangelist Luke the Drifter. Hank III's two identities are trad country singer and self-destructive punk. Which one will triumph? I'm betting on the country singer side.

To read the entire article, click on the link above. I only posted the part that I liked.
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