I’m thirsty.

Blak Twang– Publik Order, [Kik Off]

I’ve just received my copy of The Dummies’ Guide To Music Criticism in 2005, and the first page just says “Do make sure to point out as often as possible the similarities between crunk and heavy metal”. Well, “Publik Order” hasn’t grown its hair long and started screeching about hobbits, instead it’s taking it back to the Spirit of 77, specifically sounding like Sham 69, which you’d imagine is a trick that few rappers other than Tony Rotton himself would be able to pull off. This track is just one of about seven hundred reasons why Taipanic is head and shoulders above the rest of the UK rap game at the moment, as he spits some verbiage on obtaining your third sheet down the local hostelry, far more Wetherspoon’s than ChinaWhite. He sounds like a one-man ASBO-magnet on this track, twice points out how much he hates the gays in case you missed him the first time round, still finds time to question Wyclef Jean’s suitability to host the 2002 MOBO awards, and then, come on, “T-POW! That’s how I smash the china in your hand”. How genius? Very genius.

[visit Blak Twang’s website here, buy Kik Off here]

Corb Lund Band– Time To Switch To Whiskey, [Five Dollar Bill]

Knob Creek, that’s some nasty shit. I drank it mixed with Schnapps one night and spent the rest of the day lying very still. Anyway, the Corb Lund Band feature the drummer from Nickelback or something, and annoyingly nobody cares about them except me and Chad “Aslan” Kroeger, who’s confused as to why there’s nobody there to provide him with funky live beats to sing over in the studio. They’re either worryingly authentic or wonderfully inauthentic, a Canadian country act who you think are alt.country at first, and then realise that they don’t suck so they can’t be. They come up with such great advice as “It’s time to switch to whiskey we’ve been drinking beer all night”, they get into all manner of wacky scrapes in Irish pubs, and they guarantee that a suitable level of drunkenness was achieved by the backing vocalists before the track was recorded.

[visit Corb Lund Band’s website here, buy their here]

Dean Martin– Little Ole Wine Drinker Me, [Everybody Loves Somebody]

Oh, you thought that Stylus was going to get its drink on and not invite Dino Crocetti? What some of you have forgotten in an effort to reduce Dean Martin to his “Live At Sands”/Rat Pack Confidential pocket bio personality is that he always wanted to be a country musician. The Dean “Tex” Martin albums were where he got to live those fantasies out. On “Little Ole Wine Drinker, Me”, he has to make do with just saying “Tennessee” every now and then. There’s a reason why lushes worldwide rank Martin just below Oliver Reed on their list of icons. It’s because no other musician ever understood the link between alcohol and misery as well as he did. He didn’t drink to forget, he drank to anaesthetise. But there’s always that moment of immense tranquillity that comes with drunkenness, the moment where the world just makes perfect sense, everything seems to slow down to an acceptable pace. That is a Dean Martin moment.

[visit an unofficial website here, buy Everybody Loves Somebody here]