If you like tough-sounding songs with great one-liners like, “I like to get high as a mountain when I’m crumbling to my knees,” then Tim Barry’s 2010 release—his third album—is for you. 28th and Stonewall is 12-songs of pure countrypunk bliss.
It is muscular, honest, earnest and gritty. It’s ballsy and brassy, bluesy and boozy. Angry, ornery, furious and joyous. Yeah, I loved it. If I’d been turned on to it last year, it would easily have made my top 10 for 2010. Virginia’s Barry is a chronic tourer, spending months at a clip on the road, and the time he’s spent working his craft shows in the music. In fact, the album feels more like conversation than music—but I mean that in the best way possible. I mean it like, he’s so comfortable behind the mike and guitar that you forget about the barrier between listener and performer and become immersed in songs that are really revelatory stories masquerading in the verse-chorus-verse structure. And his days as the frontman for the defunct punk band Avail” come through as well, showing up in a vocal delivery that seethes, burns, scolds and growls.
For fans of punk folkers and country punkers like Frank Turner, Billy Bragg, old Ryan Adams, Mark Lanegan, and Steve Earle.
