The Bottle Rockets made most mainstream music seem out of touch with reality Friday at a sold-out Hideout. Rejecting the self-importance, extravagance and entitlement embraced by contemporary stars, the band played slice-of-life songs about ordinary people lost in the fringes of society. Arriving at a time when the income gap between the rich and poor is the widest in America since the Great Depression, the blue-collar narratives came across with striking relevance and gutsy compassion.
Ironically, many of the hardscrabble tales the veteran quartet played were two decades old. To honor of the 20th anniversary of their debut album, the Bottle Rockets focused on material from it and the 1994 follow-up release, recently reissued together as a deluxe set by Chicago’s Bloodshot Records. Having emerged from the same “alt-country” scene as Uncle Tupelo, the Missouri-based group earned critical accolades yet missed out on commercial success. Undeterred, the band preserved through myriad lineup changes while maintaining its ragged approach.
Simple and direct, the Bottle Rockets’ cross-section of rowdy garage rock and punk-infused country mirrored the no-frills nature of their desperate protagonists. Trailer parks, abused women, dirty-blonde divorcees and public-aid recipients aren’t sexy topics. But when delivered by singer/guitarist Brian Henneman in a nasal twang, the stories echoed with honesty and humanity, giving voice to lower and middle classes seldom portrayed as anything other than stereotypes.
Henneman and his mates challenged such perceptions with blistering wit and blazing guitars. Political correctness would wait for another day. The Bottle Rockets berated racism (“Wave That Flag”), condemned exurban sprawl (“Manhattan Countryside”), toasted hillbilly lust (“White Trash”) and assailed pretension on the humorously scathing “Idiot’s Revenge.” Similarly clever, “Building Chryslers” viewed the downfall of U.S. manufacturing via the actions of a factory worker solely concerned with overtime pay. Akin to many of the band’s tunes, it served as a microcosm of the struggles facing common folk.
Loneliness and isolation often compounded the problems. “Welfare Music” surveyed the account of a broke single mother living in a mobile home, the misfortune offsetting an otherwise gleeful square-dance melody and marching beat. On the ballad “Smokin’ 100’s Alone,” Henneman’s slow drawl conveyed the no-win situation of a woman willing to take her abusive partner back in order to stave off crippling sadness.
Despite the adversity, the Bottle Rockets championed against-all-odds hope evident in their outward appearances and messages. Nowhere was this spirit more apparent than on “Smile,” one of several new songs premiered during a 100-minute set in which both past and so-called “future” fare sounded very much like the present.