Dereconstructed
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires aren\'t your daddy’s Southern rock band. True, this Alabama quartet proclaim their rebel pride and fighting spirit with hellacious conviction, time and again. But as their sophomore album, *Deconstructed*, makes clear, they do it with a deep knowledge of Southern history informed by 21st-century experience, making their music more than a rehash of what Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Allman Brothers achieved 40 years ago. Frontman Bains brings a punk rocker’s ferocity to downhome anthems like “Flags!” (a blazing salute to his native region). Slower tracks like “Mississippi Bottomland” and “The Weeds Downtown” apply this same raucous passion to grooves as steamy as Tuscaloosa on an August afternoon. The twin-guitar attack of Bains and Eric Wallace slashes at the melodies with brutal finesse, filling “Dirt Track,” “We Dare Defend Our Rights,” and similar tunes with bursts of sublime fretboard violence. From the bluesy chest-thumping of “Company Man” to the relentless Bo Diddley–esque rhythms of “Burnpiles Swimming Holes” and the menacing hard twang of “What’s Good and Gone,” Bains and company do their Dixie roots proud on *Deconstructed*.
Former Dexateens member Lee Bains III is a conflicted Southerner: heir to a questionable legacy of racism and regressive politics, yet also to a culture defined by nonviolent dissent and artistic innovation. On his second album with the Glory Fires, Bains continues to plumb the vagaries of Southern heritage as well as his own mixed emotions toward it.
The Alabama quartet's second record of '70s Southern rock fares better than their debut, but is held back by shoddy production.
Depending on your age and musical proclivities, the term “Southern rock” likely evokes one of two sounds.
Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires’ Dereconstructed sounds like a continually exploding bombshell.
Alabama's Glory Fires share some of the musical heritage of southern rock, but in other respects they are ferociously anti-traditional, writes <strong>Michael Hann</strong>