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The Fucking Buckaroos have remastered and re-released their 2007 self-titled debut album. Having heard and reviewed the second one first, I was excited to hear 21 more tracks from the Bay Area bluegrass punks. “Danville Girl” is an old train song that I came to love through Woody Guthrie. The Buckaroos give it a good thrashing and a Tom Waits-esque bulldog vocal. “Pidgeons” sounds like a Grimple song with banjo, and the banjo takes center stage in “Walkin’ Banjo.” “The White Light,” relies on simple rhymes and harmonies as two minutes speed by, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” is a blistering take on a 1907 Christian hymn with different lyrics than I remember, but that’s the beauty of public domain, you can add and take out what you want. “Drinkin’ About You,” is a sad song, but the spoken part cracks me up. The hectic, harmonica heavy whirlwind of “One More Time,” and the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it “Rosie,” lead into the caustic, waltzy, but not too schmaltzy “Wine Me, Dine Me.” “Oh My Love,” is a down-home satire on the country love song format, while “Time And Time Again” is a speedy, spiteful sing along. “Wide Black River” is the longest, darkest, and most Tom Waits-esque song on the album. Seriously, the thing sounds like it could’ve been on “Rain Dogs.” “Workers’ Song” gets back to the folk-punk fury of the rest of the album. “Hangin’” seems too slow and somber to clock in just shy of three minutes, while “Letter from the North” sounds like a moonshine-soaked chase through a wooded area. The unrelenting “Crownless King” is the second-longest song on the album. “In My Head” is an unabashed basher of a song, while “Sally” sounds like something Dylan might’ve written in the mid-70’s. “Droids (Not the Ones)” closes the album off with a tense, funny, punky Star Wars reference, more like a skit and a sample with a frantic refrain. Overall, we got us some good tunes here.
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