The Rock*A*Teens

Golden Time (Merge)
by Jon Sarre

Cabbagetown, GA heirs to Fiddlin’ John Carson, these Rock*A*Teens produce high-falutin’ lowbrow faux hillbilly for folks too fuckin’ smart to take that shit straight. They’re pretentious enough to do a trailer park concept record (this one here, killah), but dumb enough to drench it in Stonesy approximations of honky tonk and cheesy Faulkner babble like they were hill-dwellin’ versions of Scratch Acid or maybe Beck if he didn’t just borrow them Cowboy duds for a magazine shoot (or something else equally dubious). Maybe the Teens are too damn educated for their own friggin’ good, or so my suspicious nature leads, cuz it all just seems way too fronted. Still, this crap is damn catchy, singalongable for sure. “In the Woods of Hemlock Park” oughtta be required listening for wanna-be whitetrashophile songwriters. Who knows how well it’ll hold up a few years from now, but for this second, I like it.
(PO Box 1235 Chapel Hill, NC 27514)