Wes Frazer
Lee Bains III + The Glory Fires
Youth Detention (Nail My Feet Down to the Southside of Town)
Don Giovanni Records
When six of the tracks on an album have titles ending in an exclamation point, you might suspect that the performer is a tad excitable, which is definitely the case with the electrifying third outing of Lee Bains III. Ripping through his songs like the rowdier little brother of the dudes in Drive-By Truckers, this Birmingham, Alabama native infuses crunchy Southern rock with strong shots of punk’s raw energy and rap’s attention to words. “I Can Change!,” “I Heard God!,” “Black & White Boys” and other incendiary tunes supply a jolt of purifying righteous noise, but also offer plenty of food for thought, touching on issues of race, class and other difficult subjects without resorting to glib generalities. Incorporating a sound clip from a 2016 Black Lives Matter rally and accompanied by a reading list (Angela Davis, Allen Ginsberg, Jean-Paul Sartre, et al.), this 17-track, nearly hour-long epic is exhilarating, exhausting and well worth checking out!
