The Grimm Brothers collected fairy tales about scoundrels, Rapunzel and the Tailor in Heaven. Those are people that Jacob and William–German boys born in the 1780s–never met, delivering neat little narratives that offer moral lessons outlining life codes meant for mimesis.
Let’s get one thing straight: This ain’t a fairy tale.
Brothers Grim–four Raleigh boys who like cigarettes, rock ‘n’ roll music and brown-bottle beer–are after none of that. They write straight from number one, unloading real-life, real-grit narratives scratched out here and now by fellas that have had jaws busted, faces bruised and hearts broken. If that sounds like a formula for a country-western tear-pool, then it’s dead on.
“God takes lovers away from each other/ Puts them in a box under lock and key,” Adam Lane sings with a thin-lipped anxiety and a barstool disgust in “Don’t Wait for Me,” a sort of Steve Earle love-hurts song narrated by a vicarious Vietnam tragedy.
But this isn’t country-western music. Instead, Brothers Grim rides the border of alt.country, delivering sincere, rural-rendered sud songs behind a two-guitar caterwaul, led by Kris Walz’s Skynyrd-taught blistering pentatonic leads and distorted punk rhythms popularized by Uncle Tupelo. Shimer Gradus even takes a drum solo as “You’re Killin’ Me” slams to a Jason & The Scorchers’ halt. Showing wide rock roots, Lane offers a glimpse of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” Dylan on “Escape,” a social gripe leveled at false prophets and maligned media: “Animation, dis-nation, blind leaders who can’t hear what they say/ Oversights, overseers, overachieving every goal/ And here we go.”
Like their kindred spirits in The Drive-By Truckers, Brothers Grim both understands and harnesses the spirit of its native South, especially in the Patterson Hood-dream “Tonight,” a revivalist anthem that understands the secret of the Muscle Shoals country-rock recipe was always its defiant soul. And, in large part, they nail it.
