Three albums in and Denton’s Slobberbone is firing on all cylinders. Brent Best and his band have tamed their “AC/DC of alt-country” comparisons, creating a twelve-song cycle of barn-burning beauty. Recorded at Ardent Studios in Memphis, Everything You Thought Was Right Was Wrong Today brims with the fervor of the group’s earlier recordings but is tempered with mandolin, fiddle, pedal steel guitar, and accordion. It’s a companion to the Replacements’ Pleased to Meet Me, recorded with producer Jim Dickinson in that same studio in 1987. Besides Dickinson on piano, other Memphis musicians add trumpet, sax, and Hammond B-3, which mixes greasy soul with Texas grit. This is most true of “Placemat Blues,” a rollicking guitar attack with horns and lap steel all fighting for the same musical space. “Lazy Guy” and the chugging banjo wail of “Pinball Song” conjure up the Pogues playing a Texas dance hall. And the lovely “Magnetic Heaven” is a short, sweet guitar and mandolin instrumental. Beautifully crafted, lyrically wise, and played with abandon, Everything is Slobberbone’s best record yet.
