The Meat Purveyors are widely considered the Sex Pistols of bluegrass, unloading their songs at whiplash-inducing velocity while delving, lyrically, into areas oft-neglected by your average pick-and-grin fiddle folkies. They’re less O Brother Where Art Thou and more O Brother, Thou Art A Drunken Nuisance, and I Detest Thy Guts. The Purveyors’ fourth CD, the excruciatingly titled Pain By Numbers, shows members of the Austin-based outfit are up to their usual tricks—outstanding stomp-grass musicianship bottled in 14 bourbon-drenched tunes.
Pain By Numbers includes its share of covers, but side-steps the gimmickry perpetrated by modern bluegrass groups who feel the need to countrify left-field selections (remember Nickel Creek’s squeaky-clean rendition of Pavement’s “Spit On A Stranger”?). Instead of awkwardly foisting a ten-gallon hat on 50 Cent or Britney Spears, which at most gets you some novelty laughs, the Purveyors take on Fleetwood Mac’s “Monday Morning” as well as Johnny Paycheck’s “It Won’t Be Long (And I’ll Be Hating You)”. The Meat Purveyors seem intent on waving the bluegrass banner high instead of selling their Southern souls for a bit of thin crossover recognition.
The strongest tracks on Pain By Numbers are, of course, the originals. Preferring to sing about honky-tonk’s chew-smeared underbelly and barroom stench rather than cowpokes and mama, The Meat Purveyors can go from somber to sassy in under eight seconds. While they aren’t stretching the genre or breaking new ground in bluegrass, the Purveyors prove it ain’t just music for maw, paw, and your local 4-H chapter. Pain By Numbers is for people who prefer their bluegrass unmanicured and their Jack Daniels straight-up.