The Lazy Cowgirls
I’m Goin’ Out and Get Hurt Tonight
Reservation
This album actually marks the 20th year of Pat Todd’s Lazy Cowgirls, a Californian biker rock outfit that blends blue-collar pub rock with a swaggering boogie strut and Southern-styled riff-machinery. Offering raucous rock’n’roll raised on an unhealthy diet of New York Dolls and Rory Gallagher, The Cowgirls seem to get harder and more focused with each release. I’m Goin’ Out and Get Hurt Tonight is certainly among the band’s more uncompromising releases – the Cowgirls are probably starting to realize they’re too old to care about conquering the world through compromises and radio hits. On here, they barely pause for breath, and when they do, it’s for brutally self-deprecating songs like the wonderful, tragic “Swept Across the Borderline” or the careful “You Might Be Lost Now.”
In fact, one of the most appealing aspects of the band is their complete avoidance of the macho posturing that marks so many bands in a similar vein. The Lazy Cowgirls are self-assured, for sure, but Todd is far too insightful a lyricist to fall over into either tough guy posturing or lazy romanticism. Instead, the band offers boisterous rock’n’roll with fragile undertones of loneliness and real question-asking. They may still be a live band first and foremost, but this album proves they can be great songwriters and a wonderful studio band, too. The album’s latter half lags somewhat compared to the wonderful first half, but there’s no doubt this is one of the band’s more focused and consistent albums yet, proving that, twenty years into their career, the Lazy Cowgirls still have a lot more to say before they eventually decide to hang up. It’s good to have them around.
Reservation Records: http://www.rezrecs.com/
