Killville Massachusetts. A dirty little town nestled between the Berkshire mountains and the mighty Connecticut river that most folks would prefer did not exist. Every spring the flood waters from the melting snow wash the sins from these hills into the muddy water and carry them out to sea. But some sins are just too filthy to wash away. They gather in brackish pools and fester. They fertilize the land and evil grows. Grows into places like Killville. Angry Johnny and the Killbillies live here. They sing songs about sin and hate and the occasional redemption. Exposing the dark underbelly of americana with a Faulkneresque flare, they paint a Norman Rockwellion nightmare laced with just enough black humor to keep you smiling, and a backwoods beat that'll keep your toes tapping all the way to the promised land if you're
lucky, and all the way down to Hell if you're not.
The new album loosely tells the tale of one unlucky son of a bitch called Monroe. His fall from grace, his attempts at redemption, and his eventual inevitable demise. His trip on down to Hell ain't pretty, but man it sure sounds sweet. So enjoy the music, enjoy the ride, and be glad that it happened to Monroe and not to you.
Angry Johnny & the Killbilies - Puttin the Voodoo on Monroe
Angry Johnny & the boys from Massachusetts bring an amazing addition to your musical library here. Filled with emotion from beginning to end, ‘Puttin the Voodoo’ is uniquely entertaining. I believe this release truly is in a class of its own. The guys call it “American Bloodgrass”. A little bit of country, a little rock, some bluegrass, a bit of folk, & a lot of old-school is what it’s composed of. Even though most of the album has a melancholy tone, it truly takes you from one extreme to the other. “Jerry Lynn” almost jerked a tear, while “Waltzing on Air” had me laughing the whole way through. The songs tell a tale of headache & heartbreak, but I just can’t quit listening to the damn thing. Maybe it’s the mandolin/doghouse combination. The outcome is a very original style of its own. Those of you that don’t mind a little country with you rock, go pick this one up so you can share my enthusiasm!
"Sly’s Reviews and Interviews" www.psychobillydeluxe.com
Taking the ethos of psychobilly to the extreme, Angry Johnny and his three backwoods ramblers make sleazy, Ritalin-fed country that twitches with a psychosomatic spurn. The scorching opener on their third album, Puttin' the Voodoo on Monroe, reels with the hot hate of a spurned lover drunk on revenge, interpreting that death-by-booze-and-mayhem attitude into lyrical aggression spit over blistering Mariachi horns. And when Johnny caterwauls, "I choose the gun instead of the Bible," you'd better believe him.
-KJ "INDY WEEK.com"
Thursday, November 25, 2004
Daily Hampshire Gazette
Johnny Memphis
Halloween, not Thanksgiving, is the holiday when we should be celebrating Angry Johnny. His tales of murder and love gone very wrong will scare you out of your wits, because the stories are so real. Angry Johnny does not play at despair and evil, he follows it all the way down with an unflinching eye.
The black humor in songs like "Lucky Day" ("It was not his lucky day") will have you chuckling until the end when the protagonist dies a grisly death outside the gas station he was trying to rob. "He came to rest in a bloody mess, up against the Coke machine."
On his unrelentingly excellent and dark new album, banjos pluck, guitars strum and quiver while the anti-heroes of these songs get in deep trouble. Angry Johnny sounds like he could be Fred Eaglesmith's dangerous brother. He writes with Eagelsmith's feel for details of a down-and-out life.
"Jerry Lynn" is a bruised, pulp novel of a song about another desperate soul who leaves his girl crying at the bar as he goes off toe move some car full of cocaine and stolen guns on the Chesterfield highway.
Characters with names like Shelburne Montgomery reference places in western Massachusetts and on his Web site "("getangry.com") Angry Johnny describes his band as "Connecticut river Valley boys from right around Killville, MA."
The Church of the Angry Mind
By Shawn Stone
Metroland ONLINE "The Alternative Newsweekly Of New York's Capital Region"
Angry Johnny and the Killbillies, City Limits, Michael Eck with Jackinany, Furnature Music
Valentine's, April 5
It was another evening of Brand New Country at Ye Old Valentine's. You could tell right away, because the "Brand New Country" banner-bearing the silhouette of a fellow who looks an awful lot like Abe Lincoln but is probably some musical icon I should recognize and don't-was hanging up at the back of the downstairs stage.
This informal series, organized by Jeff Burger, emcee of WRPI-FM's Sunday Morning Coming Down, brings together musicians whose work falls somewhere on the country & western continuum. Last time around, the lineup included the sweet-sounding alt-country of Coal Palace Kings and the gospel-influenced songcraft of Hayseed. This night, with Angry Johnny and the Killbillies on the bill, the mood was noticeably darker.
Angry Johnny and the aforementioned Killbillies are from Easthampton, Mass., a town they lovingly call "Killville." Killville, we are made to understand, is a world away from what the tourist bureau likes to call the "cultural Berkshires," or the comfortable college confines of nearby Amherst or Northampton-all the songs are about Killville's residents and their lovin' and sinnin' and dyin'.
It's a place where the lonely, treacherously curvy state highway through town claims the lost and doomed ("202," which bore a passing resemblance to Love's "Between Clark and Hillsdale"); where a simple grocery-store holdup ends in an orgy of blood and betrayal ("Frank"); where if a girl is well-known enough to be enshrined in song, she's too evil to live ("Jezebel").
Angry Johnny's voice was angry indeed: rough-hewn and thick with the weight of sin. Like a black-hatted preacher whose intimate knowledge of sin was earned through personal experience, Johnny's between-song patter was loaded with gloomy references to the almighty.
The band sounded angry. Whether ripping through apocalyptic tales of death or zipping through lighter, punkabilly numbers ("Disposable Boy," "Funny Thing About Heroes"), the Killbillies didn't hold back. Their arrangements were novel, too: Who ever heard of playing electric-guitar leads on a mandolin, and making it not only credible but exciting?
Read more...