Austin Lounge Lizards
Never an Adult Moment (Sugar Hill)
On their latest outing, Austin’s own bluegrass They Might Be Giants don’t stray far from the recipe that’s served them well during their two-decade history: short, countrified, bluegrass breakdowns with plenty of humorous wordplay. Which is not to say that Never an Adult Moment is just another A.L.L. album by the sextet of bass, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, and guitars. It isn’t. Their witty, political, just-plain-funny social commentary is at its sharpest and most pointed, highlights including “Asheville/ Crashville,” “Hillbillies in a Haunted House” (featuring a delightful piano cameo by Marcia Ball), and “Forty Years Old and I’m Livin’ in My Mom’s Garage.” In addition to the band’s individual and collective playing, as good as ever, song topics on Never an Adult Moment are also both contemporary (“Rasputin’s HMO”) and utterly unique. “Waitin’ on a Call From Don” documents the angst we all experience while our car is up on the racks being estimated for repair, while “A Hundred Miles of Dry” humorously chronicles a direct encounter with the Lone Star State’s capricious liquor laws. And who else would have the gumption to pair surrealistic filmmaker Luis Buñuel with stock-car superstar Richard Petty, as the Lizards do to lyrical hilarity on “The Illusion Travels by Stock Car”? No one, that’s who. Which is why the Austin Lounge Lizards are in a class all by themselves.
This article appears in September 22 • 2000.