Southern Culture On The Skids: Plastic Seat Sweat

Here's a dozen and one new songs from Southern Culture On The Skids, chock-full of hick references and faux-country riffs, beating to death old jokes like shotgun weddings, leftovers, and having your car break down outside Las Vegas. If you enjoy the group's shtick, and you can't get enough of the whole Mojo Nixon/New Duncan Imperials scene, the band's new Plastic Seat Sweat is just fine. It doesn't break any new ground; the band still seems willfully ignorant of its musical roots; and only the anti-real-estate-developer rant "Earthmover" seems to have any real point. But there are other bands for that. Plastic Seat Sweat is an adequately fun record, and you can dance stupid to it okay, but it'll go in one ear and out… somewhere. This genre has moved on since SCOTS entered it, and while the group's Dirt Track Date demonstrated that it can be damn good at this white-trash-wannabe stuff, the new record is a step backward. Not all the way back, perhaps, but definitely back across the fence to hardcore-fans-only territory.