Review Roundup: Rainbow Girls, Jason Boland, and Legendary Shack Shakers

The album releases are slowing down as artists make room both for holiday-induced financial constraints and the annual year-end best of articles. While my own list of year-end favorites is coming soon, I've got a couple more new albums to tell you about before we get there. The first is a new EP from an exciting young Bay Area band I discovered two years ago, a surprising album from an Americana veteran that, thematically, owes more to Rush than John Prine, and a roots rocker's collaboration with a punk legend.

Rainbow Girls- Rolling Dumpster Fire EP- Out Now
I discovered Rainbow Girls two years ago. They were the night's opener for one of the most stacked Americanafest lineups in my decade of going. So making an impression while sharing a bill with Yola, Molly Tuttle, and Maya deVitry is a testament to just how good they are. Their new EP, Rolling Dumpster Fire, doesn't quite capture the goofy personalities of the trio's live shows, but very effectively showcases the strong songwriting and harmonies of their songs.

From the celebration of emotional supports found between friends of differing personalities on “Free Wine”, with its beautifully layered counterpoint vocals to the surprisingly understated environmental call to arms “Santa Anna”, to the intimate dual love and loss tales of “Fake as a Dream” and “Doesn't Make Any Sense.”

Following up on their last release, a pandemic appropriate “virtual live album” Bandcamp exclusive While We Wait, Rolling Dumpster Fire is another step forward for a band that looks to have plenty more coming.

Jason Boland and the Stragglers- The Light Saw Me- Out Now
If I told you I was listening to a three-act concept album about an alien abduction, you'd probably assume I was listening to a release by Rush or a European metal band like Avantasia or Unleash the Archers. Whatever you thought, it probably wouldn't be a Red Dirt mainstay produced by a Grammy winning country outlaw. But there it is. Jason Boland and the Stragglers' new Shooter Jennings-produced album The Light Saw Me, touches on some very Earthly issues while keeping the flourishes of psychedelia that make the concept work.

The story of a cowboy kidnapped by aliens after following a mysterious light finds the protagonist traveling space and time to reflect on humanity's success and failures, contrasting his world in 1890 to the world he sees in 1990, a country beset by pollution, division, and increasing isolation, but also noting some things, like romantic love, have not changed.

In addition to the social commentary, the album's middle section connects some of history's more interesting developments to possible alien influences, and the subsequent coverups by government officials. It is here that producer Jennings, who anyone who has listened to his Sirius XM show knows is a collector of oddball conspiracy theories of the Art Bell ilk. It makes for a humorous, and in places thoughtful, look into history's more unexplainable happenings.

It's a bizarre concept for an album full of classic country steel guitars, Boland's Oklahoma twang, and spoken word interludes, but a compelling one.

JD Wilkes and the Legendary Shack Shakers- Cockadoodledeux- Out Now
The oldest album of this trio, out for nearly a month, I didn't want to let the year get away without an album that is a strong contender for my year-end column. JD Wilkes has always been a provocateur since his band Legendary Shack Shakers debuted, so you can imagine how much that has ramped up by his collaboration with punk icon and Dead Kennedys vocalist Jello Biafra.

The result is an album with drive, and a sense of humor. The highlight here is “Punk Rock Retirement Plan”, which notes how many old punks (John Doe, Exene Cervenka, Cheetah Chrome, just to name a few) seem to find themselves playing Americana. In it, the old punk “gives the safety back to mama, put the collar back on the hound” while trading “Johnny Cash for Johnny Rotten, Johnny Horton for Johnny Ramone.”

The rest of the album gleefully refuses to find a genre, bouncing between western swing, outlaw country, rockabilly, and a bit of Tex Mex. The result is an intentionally scattered, but always fun, album.