Brent Cobb has made a career blowing off steam. Though seldom outspoken, his backbone has always hinged on saying the quiet part out loud, cocking eyebrows with a line rather than a lick. On “Providence Canyon,” a record fueled by caffeine and nicotine, he hits the road with woes flying out of the open passenger window. “Shine on Rainy Day” wades with the crickets on a late night in Elaville, Georgia, applying the idioms of local legend to the bigger picture. “Southern Star” is part autobiography, informing the back-porch philosophizing as he returns home from the big city with a bag full of stories to share with the kids. The journey has its clear-cut stages, but the destination always seems similar.
“Ain’t Rocked in a While,” the newest, noisiest collection of Cobb slack-cutters, doesn’t really bother with all the detours. With such a blunt and declarative title, the point gets across just fine. See, Cobb and his crew of “Fixin’s” have been known to pull a 180 on audiences in the past unintentionally. Selling pastoral, then delivering punchy and grimy, often clouding the character at the center of it all. But more than a course correction, the record continues on Cobb’s compass to true north in the most literal of senses. The project’s namesake single drums it up in a straggly, smoky improv session that flits in a million different directions. Cobb and his crew’s pent-up itch to thrash gets frantically scratched at first, steadying once they’re sure the rust has been scraped off those Flying Vs.
The Fixin’s sort of splatters to the earth rather than leaving a defined crater in the ground. Even if it’s hard to notice that thematic through-line amidst the noise, everything here feels constricted to those hazy glow humidity bubbles as we get sucked into the garage for a half-hour jam session. Inside, noxious riffs and dusty drum fills produce a wall-to-wall layer of sweat and grime. It’s a more raucous delivery of the kind of euphoria Cobb normally wicks out with his words. However, unlike previous exposures, “Ain’t Rocked in a While” is a record that fully engages the five senses. It evokes a dive on a gravel road, illuminated in neon, tucked away into a mildew-laden corner of the county that serves the juiciest burnt hot dog you’ve ever sunk your teeth into. It’s not a knock on anyone to say that Cobb’s pen, while still soaked with redneck royalty, isn’t missed when some bigger tools in the shed get their day in the sun.
While a lot of the trends and motives of the Fixin’s are a cleaned-up master away from setting the tempo to a Home Depot commercial, they remain jagged and earnest despite the blanket statement rock fare. As a result of waiting a hair too long to push the red button on a record like this, it’s a little scatterbrained in its entirety. Jumping from Black Keys leather lust on “Even If It’s Broke,” to the pensive modes of Robert Plant on “In Our Hands” before we finally land back down south on the Skynyrd-sauced two-step “Do it all the Time,” parroting the southern rebel feel of an album like “Gimme Back My Bullets.” There’s clearly a lot of ground to cover, and even if rock and roll is dead, its history is still rich and fervently revered. The Fixin’s catch themselves between wanting to hit the bullet points of the test and seeking to personalize the material in its more freeform sections. Ultimately, they succeed at both, concocting a potent and possibly even radioactive substance from sonic fossils that still store jolts of their once-infectious energy.
But Cobb still ups his intensity and matches the group’s rabid exit out of the gate. Like any good frontman, a lot of the writing on “Ain’t Rocked” feels a little more communal, applying the internal quiet to a broad strokes approach. A track like “Take Yer Meds,” for example, exhausts shaggy-haired ramblings about how the trip is the cure, whatever pill that ends up being. Country or otherwise, it’s a classic colloquialism that bends, like the medicine remedies, to Cobb’s needs in the moment. Rather than his typical siloed state on an island of proverbial wisdom, the songwriter plays to the strengths of his peers. An amplified delivery gives a more declarative perspective on his longstanding truths, which once were so breezy that they felt as if they could flutter away with the wind.
It’s clear how much respect Cobb has for his predecessors, even going so far as to chronicle their impact on himself and his peers in previous records. It’s also evident, and refreshing, that his admiration in this specific arena is a childlike one. No doubt reminiscing on shredding Sabbath as a disheveled teen in his garage, that nostalgia is palpable in how fiercely and fiery he and his side dishes approach the source material. The growling guitars and thumping bass are used more as an exercise to strengthen rather than reshape, escalating the root of Cobb’s truth with the help of some old toys in the attic. He can’t be credited for the construction of this bonus room in the house of country music, but he’s certainly cozy enough with the owners to kick his feet up on its couch.
