It's really a shame that the Bob Stinson edition of the Replacements never did much more than flirt with country music. If they had, the results would have sounded an awful lot like Two Cow Garage's The Wall Against Our Back, and that's intended as a compliment to both bands. Recorded in... [+] Expand

It's really a shame that the Bob Stinson edition of the Replacements never did much more than flirt with country music. If they had, the results would have sounded an awful lot like Two Cow Garage's The Wall Against Our Back, and that's intended as a compliment to both bands. Recorded in appropriately garage-like conditions by Slobberbone's Brent Best (who infuses the proceedings with the same ragged-but-right feel as his own band), the Columbus-based trio blasts out 14 songs -- ending with an unexpected, unlisted cover of the Beatles' "Don't Let Me Down" that toys with grunge-era soft/LOUD dynamics -- at a thrashing pace. The relentless forward motion is broken once -- again, just like on a Replacements album -- by "Saturday Night," a solo acoustic ballad by singer Micah Schnabel that gives the otherwise Westerberg-hoarse singer a chance to be a bit more gentle to his vocal cords and the listener a chance to rest up a bit for the seething revved-up country two-step of "If This Is Home" and the flat-out punk fury of "Smell of Blood," which wouldn't sound out of place on a Hüsker Dü album. Cowpunk (as opposed to the more polite and rootsy alternative country) lives on in these grooves. [Two Cow's version of the Lennon/McCartney song "Don't Let Me Down" only appears on the promotional advance version of this album.] ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide [-] Collapse

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