Spaghetti western showdowns are conjured up all over these tracks from Jason Boyer’s Nerve City, hands on pistols and dusty tension galore. Tarantino guitar rolls strap you in for a ride alongside the protagonists in Living Wage as they try to find their way back to the midnight sun, sunset-soaked reverb warming you into this escapist dream. I think they’re running from the 9-5 lifestyle gona amok, but what they’re running from isn’t toooooooo important when this song will really soundtrack your escape from anything – as long as you’re moving while listening.
He goes even further out into the Wild Wild West (Jim West) on Junkyard, with its hoedown rhythms and rockabilly jaunt setting the scene in the Nevada’s raddest back-desert tumbleweed bar. The patrons aren’t listening that hard (too busy betting their lives in a daredevil game of poker) but they’re tapping their feet for sure, and they’ll definitely be singing along once the inevitable moustached bar brawl starts (someone called 5 aces), since Junkyard does pretty much nail a satisfying mix of swagger and desperation. And when you call your tapes things like I Fucked Death and Hell, you’d kinda expect that swagger too.
