Portland's roots rock thugs in I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch in the House put one of last year's most unexpected pleasures out last year with the debut album Creepy Little Noises, and now they're back with Put Here to Bleed. Head SOB Mike D. (who did time with that notorious combo the 101st Airborne before his stint as a rock & roll miscreant) unleashes another strong set of songs from his working class psyche, full of spit and bile - indeed, he's even angrier than before. "Dear Mr. Heston" takes the NRA head to task with righteous fury ("If you ever saw a 12-year-old boy's brains splattered on a kitchen wall/Well you'd hang your head in shame") and little subtlety ("You rifle totin' whore"); other targets of his disgust include popular alternative rockers ("The Ballad of Courtney Taylor," a less-than-flattering look at the Dandy Warhols bandleader), blind patriotism ("American Fuck Machine"), an apparently personal vendetta ("Twerp") and, well, pretty much everything about the American system ("Things That Fail"). He also finds the wherewithal to roll his characters around in the mire of self-loathing in "Hayward, CA '76," "Sixsixfive" and "La," all of which are unnervingly affecting despite a complete lack of sentimentality. "Gone As They Go" and "To Be Good," while hardly uplifting, interject a surprising tenderness into the broiling anger, just enough the keep D. from seeming like a sourpuss. The band backs up his plainspoken treatises with tough, no-nonsense rock & roll that maximizes his rootsy melodies while slathering them with enough gravel to ruin an undercarriage. Speaking of gravel, D. seems to prefer it to mouthwash; his shredded throat gives each line an authenticity that prettier singers would kill for. This is one songwriter who sings what he means and means what he sings, and this is a band as long on honesty as it is on talent. Put Here to Bleed was put here to wail.
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I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch In The House • Put Here To Bleed • In Music We Trust Records • From the get go this disc jams out. Heavy on that classic blues and rock sound with scruffy vocals and a harmonica addition that balances the rawness with ease. This album is fierce and crisp all the way through and is an excellent attempt at taking rock back to the forefront of popular music. Lyrics lean towards the tragic in "Dear Mr. Heston" about vocalist Mike D's brother shooting his other brother and then the government on "The Ballad Of Courtney Taylor" and "American Fuck Machine" which are about the corruption and inequality from those in power. The tight sound wound between these guys fit in with late night drinking bashes. "Gone As They Go," "Sixsixfive" and "La" all show off lyrical diversity and take certain risks not taken by many groups out there right now. (JC)
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Thursday, May 1, 2003



Been getting into a band called I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch in the House as of late. Their new stuff is very good...sort of like a cross between the swamp rock of Drive-By Truckers and the pissed-off liberal spewing of Steve Earle. Their new album's called Put Here to Bleed, and it's one of the angriest condemnations of Republican America to come out in the past year or two. This band does not mince words...when you dedicate a song called "American F**k Machine" to George Bush, you're pretty much abandoning any hope of lyrical subtlety.

There's also a very funny song called "The Ballad of Courtney Taylor" ,where the Dandy Warhol himself gets torn apart: "Hey you Mr. A & R would you buy my lunch for me/I'm gonna cake on some makeup then i'll pass for 23/All you pretty women, best do what I say/If I see one green m&m there's gonna be hell to pay/What's that shit some salami on my deli tray?/I'm gonna leak it to the willamette week that i'm bisexual or gay/Cause i'm a rockstar."

The real keeper is the tune "Dear Mr. Heston" (download the song here), a blunt attack on the NRA. You'd think it's just another left-wing anti-gun rant, but it turns out the singer's little brother was killed by another brother who was horsing around with a parent's gun at home, and when you listen to the song, it becomes a powerful indictment of American gun culture:

Josh said I know where mama keeps the gun/She won't even know that it's gone/I took a class and I got my license
Now my little brother will never know the love of a girl
And he'll never drink a cold one
And he'll never see another sunrise
And he'll never damn sure damn sure fire that gun/Dear Mr. Heston
If you ever saw a 12 year old boys brains splattered on a kitchen wall
Well you'd hang your head in shame
You rifle totin'whore
Cold blooded old blooded sick ass man

One of the better songs I've heard this year...
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Mike Damron's bluesy/country outfit is back for another fight. I Can Like Any Sonofabitch In The House is like a ballroom brawl that never ends. It seems like only a couple of months ago that I was reviewing their debut, Creepy Little Noises. Now with their sophomore album out on In Music We Trust again, Damron has honed this style of raucous rock to his own art-form. Mike states that his influences range from Steve Earle to Lynyrd Skynyrd to Thin Lizzy. This all adds up to an energetic set of music and that's what Sonofabitch delivers on his new album. He takes a political approach on some of the songs like "Dear Mr. Heston", an anti-gun song. It really is Mike's voice that makes his band stand out from others. His vocals are twangier than Merle Haggard's and rougher than Joe Cocker's. At times, Sonofabitch is totally rocking like Jackyl and other times Mike has his foot totally in the country sound. It's a refreshing album that isn't all that unique but there is so much heart in Damron's music that it more than makes up for it.
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