Desperate Hearts

iTunes Review

Bart Crow Band hails from Austin, Texas where you have to go out of your way to find bad barbeque and mediocre music. Their second album brews a hearty rue of solid country rock loaded with barbed song hooks, absorbing lyrics, timeless production, and a heap of rootsy instruments — the most noticeable being a gritty Hammond organ that grinds over twangy Telecasters on the opening “Driftin’ In the Wind,” a countrified power-pop gem contrasting up-tempo, smile inducing melodies with lovelorn lyrics. “Back Down” grooves with impressive guitar leads that walk a tightrope between dexterous finesse and drunken, sloppy, crunchy distortion to sound like a tougher version of the Gin Blossoms. The fetching “Hollywood” is a standout, an Americana ballad boasting heartbreaking male/female vocal harmonies (the latter provided by the silky voiced Fallon Franklin). Fans of early ‘90s alt-country bands will likely gravitate toward the title track, which evokes the era’s penchant for trying to find out what things might have sounded like if the Replacements grew up in Texas instead of Minnesota. Much here hinges on the ghost of alt-country past, but the ideas and lyrics here are hardly outdated.