Call it alt-country, but From the End of Your Leash is as refreshing and entertaining as that label once promised. Check out the choice of a cover reincarnated in a post-country way, "The Things I Didn't Say." That is one of the Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show songs, employing Shel Silverstein lyrics. Then, Bobby Bare and company (performing as Bobby Bare Jr.'s Young Criminal's Starvation League) can deliver a colorful original like "Visit Me in Music City," which would fit right into the David Allen Coe songbook.

With horns and other rock tricks, this album has a crisp Memphis blend to it. Bare also once again gets a lot of great names in the studio with him, like Andrew Bird, Paul Burch, Duane Denison (The Jesus Lizard), Will Oldham (Palace Bros.), Paul Niehaus (Calexico, Lambchop) and Deanna Varagona (Lambchop).

Lambchop is a good reference point and Lambchop personnel have been with Bare before this quasi-concept album about the highs and lows of working it in Nashville.

[ visit Bobby Bare Jr.'s website ]