Brooklyn based sextet The Weight have crafted a loose limbed, fun loving album here, stitched together from the spare parts of a thousand beer soaked country LPs. The Weight eschew the self-serious, self-mythologizing Americana favored by many young roots acts for a rough and tumble first take aesthetic that shamelessly yokes guitar lines borrowed from Chuck Berry to hardcore honky tonk, creating a mutant strain of classic American country in the process. Are Men revels unrepentantly in flubbed guitar solos and rowdy hillbilly anachronisms. And though The Weight refuse to take themselves too seriously, they’ve clearly paid strict attention to the hell raising example of artists like David Allen Coe and Hank Williams Jr. Bandleader Joseph Plunkett sings with a whiskey cracked drawl that partakes of both Rod Stewart’s white boy soul and Jerry Jeff Walker’s weary disillusionment, while the band plows through tunes like “You’re Gonna Like Me Better” with the drunken ferocity of The Faces at their most countrified. The Weight's infectious exuberance makes Are Men one of the more satisfying independent releases to emerge from the Brooklyn scene in 2008.