Most Messed Up
By sticking together while also allowing for solo work, Old 97’s are now the veteran band they always imagined they were. The brunt of the work rests on Rhett Miller, who reportedly wanted to pull no punches and play it hard and raw with no commercial considerations; over the years he’s learned he\'s no mainstream star. So it’s no surprise when the f-bombs fly throughout the mud-kickin’ “Nashville,” where enough electric slide guitar sends the track to nirvana. “Wasted” takes a similar brutal approach to ensure the opening kvetch “Longer Than You’ve Been Alive” isn’t, well, wasted on a handful of feeble attempts at capturing the glory that was always *almost* the band\'s to take. Miller is as hungry as he’s ever been and doesn’t leave room for any fancy stylings or mood pieces. Not even “This Is the Ballad” is a ballad. “Intervention” sounds like the hotel room got trashed before anyone agreed to go anywhere. For the first time in their career, Old 97’s play consistently as the band everyone wanted them to be, as honest heirs to The Replacements (whose Tommy Stinson makes a guest appearance).
Most Messed Up, the ninth album from Old 97's, puts the "old" in their bandname. It seems like the kind of album that signals a comeback, and certainly the band rumble through these songs like they’re not tired of each other.
Rhett Miller’s got two things down: love and nausea. Miller has spent 20-plus years fronting the Old 97’s, and the sprawling ruckus of the band’s liquor-soaked decades is summed up succinctly in the group’s umpteenth album Most Messed Up. Since the early ’90s, the alt-country group from Dallas has been continuously…
Old 97's frontman Rhett Miller has spent the past two decades drawing up character studies of the heartbroken, the drunken and the depraved.
Discover Most Messed Up by Old 97's released in 2014. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.
[xrr rating=3.5/5]After a decade of making solid (read: decent to good) records, the veteran alt-country band Old 97’s has put out Most Messed Up, a self-consciously funny slab of rock, littered with tales of middle age and the vagaries of endless touring.
It feels as if the life-on-the-road song has become a rite of passage for those rock bands that manage to clock up enough years together, but after 20 years in the business Texan alt-country rockers Old 97’s probably have more of a claim to it than most. Clocking in at just under six minutes, “Longer Than You’ve Been Alive” is one of the best examples of the genre, regardless of its titular accuracy. It’s a meandering, tongue-in-cheek portrait of the rock star excesses, but also the tedium, that comes with life in a moderately successful touring band.