Those Poor Bastards - Hellfire Hymns

"Poor," "sorry," and "wretched" aren't necessarily derogative anymore as the gothic country duo Those Poor Bastards continues to prove with their second full-length, "Hellfire Hymns."

Where "Songs of Desperation" (2005) would easily accommodate a self-hanging in the dank cellar of some decrepit house in the long-forgotten South, "Hellfire Hymns" instead dabbles in utter dementia and dwells on murderous hopelessness and psychotic spiritual redemption. What could be more appealing than that?

From beginning to end, the album is a collection of pleasant schizophrenia. Over hauntingly giddy melodies played on seemingly broken instruments heard from another room, Lonesome Wyatt croons a vocal orgy of Johnny Cash, Tom Waits, the Rat Pack, and a dying crow with throat cancer. Layered under Wyatt is the eerie vocal reinforcement and nonchalant iterations of his musical partner, the Minister.

Together, they sing in a flavor of children's jingles gone horrifically awry, the lyrics only comparable to Shel Silverstein regaining consciousness with a morbid hangover.

"Darlin', darlin', darlin', I've got blood on my hands/I hope it ain't from you /I hope it ain't from you," Wyatt sings in the innocently sinister "Blood on my Hands."

Along with the vocal hissings of quite possibly the creepiest song ever written, "The Dust Storm," the record's high points include the vocally-fluctuating traditional song "The Hellbound Train," and a cynicist's first-person account of dying alone in an auto accident "Lost on the Way."

Forged in a world of wretched moral decay, "Hellfire Hymns" proves not to be your run-of-the-mill old-time backwoods sister-kissing country, but instead this poor old record stands as a true testament to competent insanity.

Those Poor Bastards
Hellfire Hymns (2007)

Tracks:
1. The Dust Storm
2. Where She Been?
3. John Henry Gonna
4. God Damned Me
5. Behold Black Sheep
6. Have I Been Faithful?
7. The Hellbound Train
8. There's Gotta Be Something Better
9. Ruin My Life
10. Blood On My Hands
11. Family Graveyard
12. Stay Away From The Forest Boy
13. In The Backwoods
14. Farewell Happy Fields
15. Lost On The Way
16. Everything Is Gone

Hellfire