THE MOTHER TRUCKERS
Let's All Go To Bed
Funzalo Records
(Release Date: 6/3/08)

 

Smoked-out skins and a rebel’s share of stories pits The Mother Truckers with Let’s All Go To Bed, the Austin quartet’s third effort and first to be recorded on a label—Tucson, AZ’s Funzalo Records (which re-released TMT’s sophomore effort, Broke, Not Broken, after signing the band in 2007). Lead axe man Josh Zee finds dirty Texas country in his Stratocaster, aided by his reunion with drummer Dan Thompson from Sony alt-rock band Protein.

 Let’s All Go To Bed rings in at thirteen tracks of exhilarating stomps, led with the 12-barred rebel yell of “Dynamite” hitting a possessed nerve in Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” Singer Teal Collins delivers impassioned vocals (I need my dynamite / I need my brown skin burned) over a frenzy of rolling snares. Collins shines on “Kaki’s Song,” an eloquent look back on an old friend, her voice clean but never soft, and “Quiet Night,” where Collins croons over unhitched guitars, bringing to mind LA’s Jenny Lewis. The down home “I’ll Give You My Word” stays bouncy and crunched, Zee trading lead licks with vocals as he spells out his way: “Don’t lie to me. You’re never gonna live it down.”

The tail end of the album belongs to Collins, whose ukulele is spotted on two songs, “I’ll Meet You There” and the sublime “Let’s Stay Outside” (a two track mix belonging wholly to Collins). Simple, straightforward and rooted in it’s proven methods, Let’s All Go to Bed  stands as forty two minutes of unforgotten rock ‘n’ roll. A “Soul’s Journey Home.”