Jason and the Scorchers

“Clear Impetuous Morning”
(Mammoth/Atlantic) **** (out of four)

By Todd Dawson, The Express-Times (Pennsylvania) Music Section
Friday, October 11, 1996

Copyright 1996 - 2004 The Express-Times

Jason and the Scorchers blazed the trail for country-punk/alternative-country some 15 years ago. You know, the path since followed by the likes of Son Volt, Wilco, the sorely missed Jayhawks, Soul Asylum and Ween. With the 14 searing tracks of “Clear Impetuous Morning”, the Scorchers play music with hell-bent menace and chilling insight.
Lead singer Jason Ringenberg spits out “Oh what a rush” on the first track, “Self-Sabotage”, and from that point on the band plays nothing but crash-and-burn rock. Expect no reprieve from Jeff Johnson’s slap-in-your face bass guitar or Warner Hodges’ needling lead guitar. “Going Nowhere” is a country-swaggering tale of trailer park romance gone violent and drug-addled with a glimmer of redemption.
“Victory Road”, the band’s [album’s] first single, is a furious rocker that charts a course to the exit ramp for freedom and happiness. Equally volatile and angry is “Kick Me Down” where Perry Baggs’ percussion adds punch to the tune’s rambunctious stance and Ringenberg’s voice whelps in defiance. Emmylou Harris joins Ringenberg on the acoustically sharp “Everything Has a Cost”, a haunting tale of heartless love.
There’s a surprisingly sharp rock-pop edge to “Uncertain Girl”, which teeter-totters over doubts that come in ending the “wreckage” of a relationship. “2+1=Nothing” traverses the same ground, this time with a relentless country-rock beat, adding a “new math” twist to a lover who can’t shake an ex’s shadow.
The Scorchers’ devotion to brass-knuckles punk explodes in “Walking a Vanishing Line” and the scattergun fury of “Tomorrow Has Come Today”. This is rock as feverish and deadly as it gets from a band that knows “one fears the branding iron more than the scar”.
Jason and the Scorchers will play Thursday at the North Star Bar, 27th and Poplar streets, Philadelphia.

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