Me First and Gimme Gimmes - Love Their Country

Punk’s premier all-covers supergroup takes on American country on its sixth full-length record, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes Love Their Country. The now-infamous assemblage of musicians (Spike from the Swingin’ Utters, NOFX’s Fat Mike, Joey Cape and Dave Raun of Lagwagon, and Foo Fighter Chris Shiflett) has tackled pop and/or R&B hits of the past three decades for other releases, and this the group shifts its attention to traditional and popular country—Hank Williams, John Denver, Garth Brooks, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Dixie Chicks, etc. Like the majority of the work from the band’s members’ other groups, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes is a group whose work is typically of the pop/punk strain, and the transformation of most any musical work into pop/punk is, well, not something that demands much effort, or talent, for that matter. And despite being a product of some of the modern punk rock’s most notorious jokesters (namely, Fat Mike), Love Their Country straddles an almost invisible line between mockery and adoration for the originals. Popularized by Johnny Cash and Gene Autry among others, “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky” sounds like it was pulled straight out of the Bad Religion songbook after Me First has its way; The Eagles’ “Desperado”, a sidestep from the record’s theme, and Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” are probably the most well-known works covered, and while these versions won’t be revered by fans of the originals (or probably by anyone at all), they’re not destroying the classics. And the remakes are almost all as listenable as when in their traditional formats. Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” finds itself introduced with Scottish bagpipes, while “Goodbye Earl” (Dixie Chicks) sounds like it could be a Me First original, if those existed. At its core, Love Their Country sounds exactly like what it is—a bunch of Fat Wreck punk rockers doing country songs—and Me First are one of the only groups audacious enough to try and succeed. There’s no underlying statement on the record; the songs seem to have been chosen for purely musical reasons as opposed to messages, and the selection runs the gamut of the genre. So, it finds itself as a record that’s as notable for its covers as for being a solid pop/punk record in general. [www.fatwreck.com]