02/16/2005 Pitchfork, Album review , 'Believe'

With a title like Believe, you'd think Th' Legendary Shack-Shakers have a specific something to believe in. And yet, the album's cover displays a mishmash of Christian or Muslim hands clasped in prayer, an upside-down star with funky characters on it, palmistry lines on the creepy hand, astrological symbols, crosses, some sort of masonic/Egyptian eye, devil horns, and the sun and moon. What's all that supposed to mean? It's like Douglas Adams' electric monk or something, programmed to believe up to 17 contradictory ideas at once.
Electric monkism follows the band into its music-- cowpunk/psychobilly that deals in quasi-religious/sacreligious vagaries but only hints at a connection to the group's ironic Southern Baptist image. Clearly, they're not theologists, and they seem to think Satan's kinda neat in a noncommital way, so don't come for the preaching-- come for a shit-kicking good time. Th' Legendary Shack-Shakers could be considered style over substance but their music is so much fuxD1and, besides, they do style very well.
They open the album with its high point-- a badass klezmer/rockabilly hoedown called "Agony Wagon", which kicks off with clarinet and accordion riffing, sweet shuffling drums, and fired-up vocal. They seem to realize how good it is, reprising it in the album's closing instrumental. In between, there's plenty of swaggering and stomping about, with big-reverb cowpunk like "Bible Cyst" and "Where's the Devil...When You Need Him?" rubbing up against the ramshackle acoustic waltz ballad "The Pony to Bet On" and distorted hard rock(abilly) numbers like "Cussin' in Tongues" and the Sonny Boy Williamson/Willie Dixon cover "Help Me". The mouth harp gets plenty of action, especially on "Fistwhistle Boogie", where vocalist Col. J.D. Wilkes lets loose on the thing like an Old Western mob on a prisoner.
Believe is the second album from the Shack-Shakers (they had the gall to name the first one Cock-a-Doodle-Don't), and by the sound of things they've grown quite comfortable with their spiritually ambiguous ways and more importantly with their brand of wild, raving psychobilly. I actually wish they'd extended the klezmer tip through the whole album, because it's their most interesting card to play, but the chicken shack rock they came up with instead is full of enough piss and vinegar for a plenty good time.