3 out of 5

Label: Sidewalk Records

Produced by: Dave Sardy

I’ve immersed my whole dang self into instrumental metal, and various post-rocky indie and hardcore subgenres, no wave across the years, modern psych, and lots of acid / IDM. I’ve waded into grindcore / death metal, more mainstream pop, backpack / indie hip-hop, house / garage music, modern Americana / folk and modern jazz. I’ve dipped my toes into modern and old school hip-hop / rap, classical and old school jazz. Obviously I’ve skipped plenty of genre there, but on the whole, I’ve owned an album or down some level of exploration at some point.

Except… country. I know the names I should know; I know the names I should respect. I have a passing understanding of the tradition, and how its evolved and changed, and how its tropes are reflections of tropes in all the genres mentioned above. But I don’t care how much you Outlaw or Cowpunk it or tweak it in some other way: I have never found a good way in. And, if anything, you’d think an unauthorized album of rockers deemed too off-brand at the time by Sidewalk Records, the then-label of the off-brand Williams, Hank Williams III, produced by my favorite producer of all time, Dave Sardy, would be exactly the magic pill I needed to start down some country music sidestreet.

Eh.

This is where the tropes of country tend to bite me. Whereas with mainstream pop music I often cringe at its accessibility and surface level-ness, I can acknowledge the value of a catchy ear-worm, with its singalong encouragements sometimes granting some inferred depth. (Like if I belt out this chorus with feeling, maybe I am actually feeling something?) But for whatever reason, I can’t get to the ear-worm level with country, and thus I have a hard time getting over its well-worn lyrical tropes. Transferred to Hillbilly Joker’s drinkin’/druggin’/eff-the-man vibes, it helps blur the lines between this stuff and punk, but almost especially with Sardy on board to make this rock like the music he’d been producing a decade prior to this – Helmet, Slayer – I’m cringing all the way through this album. It is, sincerely, as simple as “not yore daddy’s country music.”

Now you know where I stand, and where I’m coming from. So it’s possible the album is a lot better than that, but I also want to “compromise” by clarifying that all of the above does not make it bad. Like, I own Revolution Smile because of Sardy, and that album is cringey as all get out – just kinda swap some of the country stomping beats for hardcore thumps and reduce the presentation factor significantly (because Williams is a great showman) and it’s approximately the same thing – but I enjoy that disc. The exception maybe being that I think Dave saved that album from its indulgences and brought out the group’s best tendencies; given the quality of albums made with Oasis and The Who, it’s clear Dave can work with huge stars and have influence as well, but nonetheless, I think in this case the partnership maybe worked against Hank: it gives the album that beautiful Sardy juxtaposition of arena-sized rawness, but it also makes it sounds way too much like, well, “not yore daddy’s country music.”

Hillybilly Joker is still good, but just like RS would do nothing to draw me to hardcore music if I wasn’t already a fan, this disc isn’t doing anything new to convince me of exploring Hank’s work more, or doing anything to highlight some part of country that hasn’t been filtered down to Rob Zombie or the like.