Pain By Numbers
On this album, TMP has distilled their attack down to the essentials: three parts liquid nitro, three parts stare-into-the-bottom-of-the-glass heartbreak, and four parts Let's Take It Outside, Short Pants.
It doesn't matter to The Meat Purveyors if you're on a bar stool or a lawn chair, if you're drinking out of a pitcher of lemonade or a sweaty tall boy, if you're wearing white knee socks, sandals and khaki shorts or a Minor Threat T-shirt and jack boots.
TMP will work it for YOU.
On Pain By Numbers, their fourth album, TMP has distilled their attack down to the essentials: three parts liquid nitro, three parts stare-into-the-bottom-of-the-glass heartbreak, and four parts Let's Take It Outside, Short Pants.
With a keen eye for covers ranging from Fleetwood Mac ("Monday Morning") to Johnny Paycheck ("It Won't Be Long") to Dusty Springfield ("In the Middle of Nowhere") to alt-country progenitors Rank & File ("Amanda Ruth") to Lee Hazlewood ("I'd Rather Be Your Enemy"), The Meat Purveyors are a wonderfully volatile concoction. Homespun tunes like their blazing new theme song "TMP Smackdown" or the drinker's lament "How Can I Be So Thirsty Today?" (with the killer follow up "when I had so much to drink last night") show a free-wheeling, sparks-a-flying band still having a ball.
They will woo you with tender ballads, only to upside you one with a gen-u-wine sonic smackdown on the flipside. They'll kick down the door at your next party, knock over the bowl of punch, and flirt with your S.O. They are the guests that frighten you when they arrive, but you sure miss 'em after they leave. Yeah, bluegrass CAN be nice, polite affair, but where is the fun in that?
Choice Cuts:
TMP Smackdown
How Can I Be So Thirsty Today?
Daydreams About Night things
Amanda Ruth
