BRox, Flatt Lonesome drop new sounds

Bit Logic

According to the old saying, the more things change the more they stay the same. That is an apt summary for "Bit Logic," the 13th album from the revered St. Louis-based Americana quartet Bottle Rockets. The 12-song set is thematically focused on coping with an ever-changing modern world - a notion that is buoyed by the band's resolute musical direction, which is mostly unaffected by the times. These separate, but related components work in concert to create an interesting artistic ...

South Broadway Athletic Club

It's been over two decades since the Bottle Rockets vaulted into the wider consciousness with 1994's "The Brooklyn Side," typified by the heartbreaking Appalachian roots folk swing of "Welfare Music" and the scorching Crazy Horse pop of "Gravity Fails" (in an alternate universe where Nils Lofgren replaced Danny Whitten). Since then, frontman/primary songwriter Brian Henneman hasn't been afraid to mix things up (a brilliant tribute to Doug Sahm, the ...

The Bottle Rockets and The Brooklyn Side (deluxe reissue)

It can safely said The Bottle Rockets were alt.-country before alt.-country was cool, and this reissue of the band's first two albums from the early '90s is proof of that. Although this extensive repackaging includes contributions from Uncle Tupelo's Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar, The Bottle Rockets never achieved the same commercial success of such acts as Drive-By Truckers and the like. And that's a shame. A song like Wave That Flag, which criticizes those that glory in the ...