Cowboy Mouth
Voodoo Shoppe
(Eleven Thirty)
The album kicks off with arguably the sharpest tribute song since Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke.” Besides referring to various Clash songs and rocking nonstop, “Joe Strummer” asserts that being cute is, by itself, not enough. Very big in New Orleans, this quartet has been going for a decade. Hurricane Katrina is addressed on two late additions. “The Avenue” is a particularly poignant account of how the storm felt and the determination to grow old in the Crescent city: “I never want to be from somewhere else.” Without sounding specifically Southern, Cowboy Mouth fiercely articulates the enchantment of its beleaguered home.
—Doug Taylor
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2007.
