Despite the valiant protests from grassroots, blue-collar country fans against the incursion of pop, trap, and R&B sounds in country music, outside influences have nonetheless impacted the format in the 2020s, and perhaps more pervasively than ever. These penetrations come not from the trendy sounds of pop radio, but from the last desperate croaks of 1990s pop-rock.
Ironically, even though the format’s freshest faces have championed this phenomenon, it’s allowed your parents’ favorite rock bands to grandfather themselves into the country music ethos. Suddenly, old heads like Bush and the Goo Goo Dolls are finding themselves at home on country festival lineups, and Nickelback is rubbing shoulders with the likes of HARDY and Bailey Zimmerman. And for all of the hand-wringing you saw in response to Bebe Rexha’s pretentious leap to the less competitive market, no one seems to mind that Hootie & The Blowfish’s three hits are now considered foundational country music.
Granted, anyone paying attention since the bro-country era could’ve called this; as country music from Nashville to Texas shed a lot of its signature trappings in the 2010s, such as the fiddle and steel, we’re simply left with rhythmic guitar music performed by predominantly white artists. By that measure, does Third Eye Blind qualify as a country band? You tell me!
In this earthy, genre-ambiguous new space, we find the ragtag Kentuckian six-piece Ole 60, whose brand of roots-rock lands squarely between Wilco and Everclear. They like to rock out, but certainly have a sad-boy side that puts them on pace with the current trends of the midwestern music scene. Led by frontman and principal songwriter Jacob Young, Ole 60 find their connection to country music on a more lyrical level, with sobering story songs inspired by their home in rural Kentucky.
They represent a generation of artists who probably grew up with radio rock, but have found no place but country music to play it. Thankfully for our format, whose audience has embraced these boys with open arms, their full-length debut presents a group with no shortage of inspiration.
With a handful of EPs already under their belt, Ole 60 isn’t known for peppy bops, but the shot of adrenaline that is Smokestack Town’s opening track has you feverish for more rip-roaring heartland rock from the band. Its portrait of their hometown is every bit as lyrically vivid as their more plodding ballads, like “Next To You” or “Brother Joe,” but also injects some vivacious youthful spirit that blesses the band with a much-needed second punch.
Unfortunately, the album’s subsequent tracks rarely go back to that well. For those acquainted with Ole 60’s growing discography, there’s a dull feeling of sameness to this collection, even though Jacob Young’s writing is as artful and pensive as ever. If you’re approaching this project ready to dial into each forelorn musing on turbulent relationships and unrequited love, you’ll be handsomely rewarded. Young’s inner monologues on songs like “Back Around” and “Who We Are” remain thoughtful and worth checking out, but an overall lack of tempo keeps this record a bit out of reach for casual listeners. If you aren’t here to sit quietly with this record and immerse yourself in every song narratively, it will likely blur together into an ambient haze of guitars and soft vocals, lacking many obvious standout cuts.
In their short career, Ole 60 has proven they’re a rock-and-roll band through and through; it would be wise to balance their singer-songwriter roots with more drums and hooks here and there. It doesn’t feel like they quite know how to balance their influences and construct a well-rounded listening experience across 11 songs.
If you thought Ole 60 was putting their pop-rock influences on the back burner, I would direct your attention to Smokestack Town’s penultimate track, a note-for-note cover of Coldplay’s “Yellow,” which serves no narrative purpose on the album, but to remind us as listeners that this kind of music is a part of who they are as well. In a way, it’s almost a bit spiteful to us as listeners that they show us at the tail end of this record that they have some power-pop balladry in them, but have chosen to refrain from using these chops on any of their original music.
Despite Smokestack Town being Ole 60’s first full-length LP, it doesn’t quite feel like a coming-out party for this young cadre, but more of an extended jam session. We see them coming out hot with a rocker before flipping through Jacob Young’s songbook, tossing in a popular cover song, and closing out the record with the ethereal instrumental “Watching Scary Movies With the Volume Down,” which feels anything but complete. The band is still in the discovery phase of their artistic journey, and with a better grasp of their capabilities from an arrangement and production standpoint, you have to feel that a truly excellent Southern rock collection is yet to come from Ole 60.
