Some tough but real subjects feature in this set of songs, which are the perfect fit for Sassparilla’s signature blend of punk spirit meets americana.
For Sassparilla frontman and songwriter Kevin Blackwell, there is one lyric in particular on the band’s eight studio album, “Honey, I’m Using Again”, that feels especially truthful to where he is at this stage of his life: “Despite all my kicking / My protesting / I’ll be damned that I got old,” he bemoans on ‘I’ll Be Damned’, but inevitability of ageing is just one of the honest looks at the human experience explored on the LP. As its title suggests, addiction is also covered, along with homelessness and death. These are subjects that could feel like a chore to listen to, but with the band’s mix of punk and americana, they make for a fresh batch of invigorating, short, sharp life lessons with a Southern gothic flavour to them.
‘When I Get Off This Mountain’, heavy with fiddle, takes a different look at ageing as the narrator decides to go out on their own terms: “Gonna find myself a mountain spring / And live a good long while / Hand me down my shotgun / Fetch a box of shells / Don’t want no walking cane or pills for the pain.” Similarly, ‘Bad Luck and Trouble’ is a fatalistic, irreligious view on death, declaring that “Bow your head in shame and pray / Death will find you anyway”. Banjo-laden, but lyrically gloomy, ‘Sad Days and Lonely Nights’ sees Blackwell leaving a lover for what he believes is their own good, but still, it leaves him with a lifelong regret as the woman turns into “A dream [he] can’t remember”.
Infectious from the first note, on ‘She Wrecks Me’, the sound of bluegrass with a slight sheen of a pop-rock coating to it, we hear about a woman that did the titular, while ‘Walk in My Shoes’ takes on the “Judge not, lest ye be judged” tenet as Blackwell reminds that you can’t know him “till you’ve walked in [his] shoes”. ‘Maggie Mae’ has traditional Irish folk at its heart, with its story a sad one of a woman who stays “drunk all the time” to the extent that she’s described, quite beautifully in its bleakness, as “Dying of living”.
The title track takes a stark look at addiction as Blackwell bluntly confesses “Well I lost all my money and my keys last night / Honey, I’m using again / Frost patterns on the glass / Can’t get out of bed / Honey, I’m using again”; similarly the sad, soulful ‘When the Medicine Takes’ is a bleak look at things as Blackwell sings “Mother Mary, do you love your son? / One more hit I’m on my way” insisting that he’ll be himself “once the medicine takes”. On ‘Submit to the Flames’, however, he contemplates ditching modern life and getting back to nature so he can “Bathe in a river of a land untamed” and “Move through the shadows / Like the wild things do”.
Blackwell is understandably proud of the album, but when it comes to comparing himself to his peers (Hillstomp, The Devil Makes Three, and the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir to name three), he remains unfailingly modest, saying that despite having “reverence” for so many bands, to call him their peer feels too much like he’s saying they are “somewhat equal” and he would “never say [he] was on the same level”. If Blackwell won’t say it, then I will: if there was about doubt before, with “Honey, I’m Using Again” Sassparilla have proven themselves to be equal to those bands Blackwell so venerates, and it’s about time they start getting to compared to Sassparilla as one of their rightful peers.
