Revenge!

Applause was not enough - he would make them all pay! This is another album from Fulks, for country fans that wondered where their music went!

'Revenge! is a 2-disc, 23-track "live record” from Robbie Fulks that invests that term with fresh thinking. One disc stars the songwriter's ferociously rocking four-man road band (and interpolates sound check and studio-grown material). The other has Robbie in an acoustic cabaret setting, and highlights his Carolina-bred flat picking and communicative dynamism. Together they form a singular document of the country contrarian's musical range - rock, bluegrass, honky-tonk, jazz - and spontaneity.

Half the tracks are new ("Fixin' to Fall” with Casey Driessen's mind-altering violin; a flailing Carter Family drive-by with silken-throated Kelly Hogan at the wheel, an emotional read on Cher's "Believe”), and all are newly fired, with an ideal blend of audiophile clarity and on-the-spot joy. More than sweet, Revenge! is a mid-career summation and vital addition from an artist who still looks curiously forward, and works best without a script.

Forget the labels - "Insurgent," "Retro," "Alternative" - and focus instead on the music. While some might try to copy old-style country music, Robbie Fulks not only knows it and loves it but brings its spirit, humour and otherworldliness to his own work.

He's the man who famously gave Nashville the middle-finger salute ("F**k This town"), and then proceeded to devote an entire album to rare and obscure country songs that almost no one in latter-day Nashville had even heard. And while most current country recordings seem calculated to serve as inoffensive background music, Fulks still writes songs that make you think and feel - and sometimes laugh out loud.