The Singles Jukebox

They appear to have got slightly prettier lately…

[Video][Website]
[6.40]

David Moore: Inventive storytelling details (rhyming “warned me” and “ornery,” lying like a penny in a parking lot) that nonetheless are just gussying up a string of heartbreak cliches. But if that was my biggest worry, I wouldn’t be able to appreciate the Swiftian (Taylor, not Jonathan) digs: “I bet she had a curfew,” “you know you’re gonna deserve this.” ‘Course Taylor would never get Daddy involved, and as revenge goes, throwing his ring in the river isn’t nearly as persuasive as destroying his property or naming his IRL ID covertly in your liner notes.
[6]

Martin Skidmore: Sold to an extent by Kimberly Perry’s warm voice, but her anger at a cheating man doesn’t come through so much. She sounds too sweet for that, and the laboured similes quickly pall.
[6]

Jer Fairall: As my introduction to this admittedly adorable-looking lot, I’m tempted to overrate this ever so slightly just for how taken I am with the gal’s voice, with its quirk-to-polish ratio unbalanced in the exact opposite direction of her contempo-country peers. It is the kind of voice that can suggest a character worth following through even the most thuddingly banal stories, which is unfortunately exactly what this set of lyrics turn out to be.
[6]

Anthony Easton: Piling up metaphors does not make the work interesting — for someone who was capable of rhetorical excess, this jumble of obvious jokes and petulant put-downs gets nowhere close to the “fuck you” it wants to be.
[5]

Pete Baran: I have a reputation for not always telling the truth. I don’t mind it– I suppose I have somewhat earned it — but when I engage in falsehoods I don’t do it in the way reminiscent of a rug, or indeed an animal cooling down from the sun. I lie like a storyteller, like someone interested in twisting the boundaries of what people can and cannot invest in or believe in. Therefore there is little use in The Band Perry’s central list of amusing similes. If said person did lie like the pine tree after the great big storm the worst that could be said is that they were a bit lazy – or dead. In the end the lyrics are super dumb, but in such a gleeful way that I cannot help wanting to sing along. And to get someone to engage with dumb lyrics is a talent that The Band Perry (after “If I Die Young”‘s equal tosh) seem great at. I like this band; take the truth where you can in that.
[8]

Josh Love: It sucks like the Flowbee that cut your hair. It sucks like you slurping down a soda at the fair. It sucks like a baby at his mama’s tit. It sucks like the lipo that made you look fit.
[3]

Chuck Eddy: They overwrite, pulling metaphors out of the hat and mixing them like crazy — that’s what they do, it’s who they are, and I’ve grown to like it; suddenly curious about their album. The taste of crow, “ornery” spouses, coon-dogs, priceless Persian rugs, “That ain’t my perfume/I bet she had a curfew”, murder threats, “Daddy’s gonna straighten you out like a piece of wire”…Is wire-straightening something people do?? “You lie like a kitty in a parking lot at the grocery store” — Am I even hearing that right? What, did the poor cat get run over? Wouldn’t a seagull make more sense? Weird. But she spits it all out mean like Miranda Lambert, and it kind of works.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Kimberly Perry’s pinched voice — she sounds as if she’s restraining despair or a scary temper — is this act’s best asset, and she invests predictably unpredictable metaphors with rue. The track could use a less somnolent arrangement though: less mandolin, please.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: It’s probably my own fault that the title of the song immediately made me think of Senator Joe Wilson’s September 2009 outburst, and that during the middle verse especially I had visions of tea partiers and right-wing radio appropriating the song as addressing Obama. But the hooks are deep and wide, the images both striking and comfortable, and the middle eight is one of the slippier shifts in tone I’ve heard in recent years. I just wish I couldn’t hear the (nonexistent?) dog whistle.
[7]

Zach Lyon: I find The Band Perry fascinating and this song pretty much explains it. Is it too much to say that The Band Perry is the Brad Paisley version of Old Crow Medicine Show? Or vice versa? There are so many comparisons to make here, and those are the two strongest in my mind, especially Paisley’s “This Is Country Music” which the Jukebox reviewed last week. First, the Paisley: “You Lie” is the show version of “Country Music”‘s tell; instead of talking about country music in his commercially-friendly way, they actually run through every sonic/lyrical influence they’ve apparently heard. It’s a (Paisleyan?) list song without any of that CMT sheen over the Real Authentic Country Instruments (Old Crow), and it’s a revenge song somewhere between Swift and Lambert (“I oughta kill you right now and do the whole wide world a service” she yelps rather unconvincingly), there’s that “on’ry” stuck in there, and the whole thing sort of reminds me of “Deeper Than the Holler” for some reason. And is that a… DUPSTEP BREAKDOWN!? Well no, but its jaunty little breakdown is just as excessive a reference. Add all that up and throw in this hair and you have an act that sounds like they grew up in Chicago and they started a country band out of (an albeit recent) love of country music, but also a little bit of kitsch and a little bit of irony. It’s surprising to listen to this and learn that they’re from Mobile. This is much better than Paisley’s song exactly because it expresses musically what he only mumbles at the end of his, but it’s a bit less genuine within the genre. Like Old Crow Medicine Show and other costume country acts that treat bluegrass like it died in the 19th century and treat it like a novelty, like they’re reviving it out of pity. So why don’t I loathe this like I loathe Old Crow? It sounds like she’s acting, but I do love the bite in Kimberly’s voice (and the voice itself) and lines like “You lie like the man with the slicked-back hair who sold! me! that! Ford!”, and rhyming “perfume” and “curfew” and really, all the slight country slumming. They’ve achieved a balance between two unpleasant extremes and somehow there isn’t a single moment I don’t enjoy.
[9]