Strong Southern rock that has lost none of its edge in the recording studio.
“Today I met the asphalt face to face / Spilt my brains all over that dirty place,” sings Rob Leines on ‘Headcase’, the title track from his third LP, and while it’s a song whose lyrics are to be taken quite literally (it’s about the time he got concussion while riding on his skateboard), the rest of “Headcase” is more of a figurative look into the workings of his brain. It’s an album that was born out of a prolonged period on the road, with Leines and his band honing their skills as a stellar Southern rock live act, giving them an electric energy that has transferred from the stage to the studio with no vibrance lost.
“I wanna rinse my body in a mountain stream / Hang my hat from the limb of a tree / Scrub my hands as if they’d come clean / Then dry them off on my blood stained jeans,” opens Leines on ‘Double Wide’, its lyrics telling of the hard daily toil of a working man as blistering guitar accompanies. Songs like ‘Kentucky’ – that explores the tenet of “What’s done cannot be undone” – and ‘Honey Hole’ – where Leines vows to always give the women in his life his all – nicely highlight the Eddie Vedder-esque “yarl” Leines voice possesses, something that’s a natural fit against loud guitar and thrumming bass.
‘Drive On’ channels old-fashioned, floor-stomping country as it relays the positive message of pick yourself up and keep moving: “That restless, rowdy feeling running in the marrow of your bones / Drive on, drive on / When you’re feeling sorry for yourself / Carry on.” As sexually charged as the title might suggest, ‘Black Lingerie’, with shades of vintages rockers like AC/DC, charts the thoughts of a man keen to make it home from the road with one thing only on his mind: “My brain is fried / My body’s tired / I’m all pent-up it’s been a goddamn while / I’ll drive all night just to see your face / With your black lingerie and matching lace.”
“A piece of heaven a slice of pie well lightning bugs they fill the sky / But these days they don’t seem as bright / Great grandparents are buried there and it’s hard to sit here and bare / When a millionaire caught wind of a gold mine,” spits Leines with venom on ‘Goldmine’, which is as angry in its attack on the gentrification of rural areas of Georgia as ‘Can’t Go On’ is sweet, with Leines crooning about his lack of capacity to survive without the one he loves (“I can’t go on without you / I don’t wanna go on home / Till your right here in my arms”). As an ex-welder, Leines is as well placed as anyone can be to draw parallels between the life of one who travels the USA for work and a musician doing the same on the smooth-sounding ‘High in the Cotton’. On the raw, guttural ‘Sinner’, he looks to repent for his past sins indulging in “cheap thrills” in the hopes of making it into the afterlife: “Cleanse my soul down by the river oh I’ve been a sinner / Gonna let that ever-loving light shine in.”
Great live acts can often struggle to capture their vitality on stage when it comes to a recording studio, but with “Headcase”, Leines and his band have really pulled it off. “We toured for three months before we started tracking, and we went straight from a gig into the studio,” Leines confessed of the approach they took to recording, which admittedly sounds like a heck of a lot of hard work, but to catch lightning in a bottle, it’s surely worth it.
