Hill Country Revue - Make A Move

Genre southern rock Publisher Razor and Tie External Links Hill Country Revue Website Hill Country Revue MySpace

I’m going to take a second before I start this review to coin a phrase to define this band:

Famous Dave’s Rock.

It’s really hard to figure out what Make A Move by the ‘contemporary blues’ band Hill Country Revue actually sounds like. Really, it’s like about nine million things at once. And it’s awesome. And It makes me want to eat barbeque. A lot of it.

The veritable party on record starts off with with “Alice Mae”, a blues-country-rock hybrid that’s raucous as it is disorienting. There’s some wah-wah guitar, wiry blues licks and plenty of blues harp that devolves into a wild stomp at the end of the song.

There’s always something hilarious about bands that have their own ‘theme song’, or song titled after the band name. Okay, so I can probably think of only one off the top of my head now (the 56 second punk blast ‘Beastie Boys’ found on that group’s The Sounds of Science comp), but that’s besides the point. Hill Country Revue totally do theirs in style. It’s a blues shuffle drenched in thick guitar, with a side of wicked guitar solo. The chorus is also golden: “Hill Country Review/is comin’/stomp your shoes”. It’s powerful, and should be the song to open all of their live shows - which, if this is any indication, are probably ridiculous.

“You Can Make It” starts like a total Allman Brothers Band (think ‘Jessica’) tune, but shifts pace quickly, and turns into ballad with jangly piano and and twangy guitar. Given the boisterous pace of the album, it’s kind of disconcerting, and the fact that it rips off the aforementioned Allman Brothers song’s solo, is pretty disappointing.

That’s quickly forgotten though, with the swampy “Let Me Love You”. It’s a classic blues song smothered in 21st century production. That’s probably because these guys are vets - two of the three members make up the blues band North Mississippi Allstars.

The rest of the record pretty much continues this trend - “Georgia Woman” is a nice blues harp workout, and “Highway Blues” pretty much sounds exactly like it should - the ‘bahm BUM bum” riff repeating over and over, with the occasional soloing punctuating the tried-and-true riff.

What’s cool about Make A Move is that Hill Country Revue take the tropes of blues and country and turn them on their head. They’re still very much there - but instead of making fun of them - they update them. There’s plenty of wild guitar, and harmonica, but they introduce classic guitar solos - and in some places, even the dissonance found in 1990’s alternative rock. It makes for a really fun listen.

Now, if you’d excuse me, there’s some leftover ribs in the refrigerator. I’m going to dismantle them rather quickly, and this record is coming with me.