Southern rock will never die. As long as humanity clings to this scorched, dying rock spinning hopelessly in space, there’ll be a bunch of dudes in cowboy hats choogling away like it's 1972. Blackberry Smoke are proof of its unswerving durability.
These Atlanta, Georgia gentlemen have been upholding southern rock’s bellbottomed traditions since 2001 – as far away from today as that was from the plane crash that did for Ronnie Van Zant. Over that time, trends have come and gone several times over, none of which have registered in the slightest on them
Rattle, Ramble & Roll is an old-school ‘best of’ album stretched out over a new school 22 tracks – their dusty southern hearts might lie in the seventies but their sensibilities are squarely in the era of the Spotify Playlist, albeit a Spotify Playlist that requires parting with cold, hard cash to own a physical copy of.
Musically, Blackberry Smoke do what Blackberry Smoke do – Lynyrd Skynyrd without the aggro, Black Crowes without the noodling. But their directness is their strength. Payback’s A Bitch, Prayer For The Little Man and the stellar Ain’t Much Left Of Me (one of six tracks here from 2012’s career-high The Whippoorwill) pack a hard-rock punch. And they can magic up a sense of place like few other bands – the wistful Azalea sways like a cornfield in a breeze and the sun-baked The Whippoorwill itself is quietly cinematic in the way it evokes endless southern summer days.
Even so, an hour and 25 minutes of this stuff is a bit much, an all-you-can-eat barbecue that looks delicious at the start but has turned into an indistinguishable mush by the end. Certainly no one needed to be reminded of the joyless boogie of 2015’s Rock And Roll Again, or be subjected to a risible live version of Little Richard’s Southern Child (‘Lawdy, lawdy, lawdy’ indeed). That ‘Volume One’ postscript looks more like a threat than a promise.
Still, one person’s indistinguishable mush is another’s shit-kickin’ southern rock party. The band have made it this far on their own terms, and they’re not going to bow to other people’s opinions at this stage. The world keeps spinning, Blackberry Smoke keep choogling.
