All Bad

Description

All Bad, the latest album by Nick Shoulders, ultimately encapsulates everything that makes Shoulders' unique brand of country music so vital: an intoxicating balance between dazzling musicality and a punk challenge, combined with a gritty eccentricity and a generational connection to the genre's roots. With a singing style inherited from his family's vocal lineage, Nick's songs achieve the rare feat of conveying difficult truths while encouraging a certain joyful abandon, balancing a sound forged by years of relentless touring with a sincere reverence for the origins of country music. In the spirit of Hazel Dickens and Jimmy Driftwood, the incisive yet wildly jubilant All Bad vocally opposes the reckless destruction of the natural landscape and endemic development, while offering plenty of joy and dance-ready rhythms. Covering a variety of old country styles, the album's infectious harmonies shine alongside everything from clattering Cajun waltzes to bluesy surf-rock-infused ballads, all tied together by a voice seemingly out of place in this century, yet always ready to speak on its issues.