perfidy

Southern Culture on the Skids are one of those bands who always seem to be punching above their weight. Certain groups' stardom, in retrospect, has an air of inevitability about it. U2 are the biggest band in the world, and it's practically impossible to imagine that under different circumstances of taste and timing, The Joshua Tree and War could be practically unknown masterpieces, circulating quietly among music collectors with a quiet fervor today reserved for test pressings of legendary Sun Ra sides and the like. Elvis Presley is so encoded in the DNA of pop music that his obscurity is literally impossible to imagine.

Not so with North Carolina stalwarts Southern Culture on the Skids. First of all, their goals are more modest. They don't do pop anthems or minutely crafted gems of timeless style. They are a party band who have survived through twenty years, eight albums plus an EP, and a couple label shifts, all the while sticking true to a fairly limited set of dependable tricks. These days, SCOTS sound a bit like the B-52s with less camp and more competence (and if you happen to think that this means they're missing all of what made the B-52s great, well then that's your own opinion), or like the Cramps' college-bound younger sibling. Last year they released their eighth LP, Mojo Box, on Yep-Roc Records. I will say this: fans of surf-rock, Southern college town party music, psychobilly, or twisted garage country owe it to themselves to own one Southern Culture on the Skids record. But is this the one?

My personal favorite high point in SCOTS' career came on 1996's Dirt Track Date (DGC). It was the left-field radio single “Camel Walk,” in which lead singer Rick Miller exhorted us in a laconic twang to “walk... like a camel” that got me. “Camel Walk” was a loopy slice of off-kilter rockabilly that lurched and heaved along with a sideways smile, achieving in the process half-accidental greatness. Although it is unfair to measure a group against one three-minute thing they did ten years ago, I can't help it. Either SCOTS have another “Camel Walk” in them or they don't.

All of the foregoing certainly reads as though I were winding up to chuck Mojo Box into the nearest river and to trash Southern Culture on the Skids as pale imitations of imitations, ten years past their sell-by date. The funny thing is, I'm not. In spite of their fixation on songs about trailer parks and country livin', in spite of the jokey/hokey aspects of their two-chord surfabilly sound, in spite of the fact that my CD collection has literally dozens of golden-age rockabilly selections that sound a lot like what Southern Culture on the Skids are doing in a more mannered and therefore less inherently fascinating way-- in spite of all this, Mojo Box is a truckload of fun. On their last few albums the band seemed to have lost focus, relying on gimmicky novelty songs to carry them through. By way of contrast, Mojo Box represents a return to form: a lean, dandy album of greasy stomps, twangy guitars, and good songs. That they have figured out how to do this again after ten years in the (more or less) wilderness is only a plus, as they are older, smarter, and better at what they do.

There's something to be said for a band who know what they want and how to get it, even when that something is to make har-har party records to drink beer, eat fried chicken, and drive fast to. Even if Mojo Box lacks anything quite as perfectly nutty as “Camel Walk,” the happytime twang of “Smiley Yeah Yeah Yeah,” the greasy, slinking “'69 El Camino,” the plaintive balladry of “Where Is The Moon,” and bassist Mary Huff's lead vocals on “Soulful Garage” make it all up. They can play, they can sing, they can write, and they can raise a Friday-night ruckus. Although hemmed in by their down-home conceits and the inherent limitations of the college town surf-rockabilly genre they inhabit, SCOTS manage to turn in thirteen entertaining, energetic performances that never resort to cliche for simple lack of good ideas.

So is this the one to get? Well... sure. It’s better than their last couple of records and has held up through more than a dozen runs through my auto-repeater, so I know Southern Culture on the Skids built Mojo Box to last. I have to put in a strong word for Dirt Track Date as well, partly because it contains all their early favorites in rerecorded form, making it a sort of midcareer greatest hits, but Mojo Box stacks up favorably, making a case that another time and place, Southern Culture on the Skids could have been as beloved as the King himself (or at least the B-52s, or Sleepy LaBeef, or Carl Perkins).

www.yeproc.com

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