Album Review- Jim Bob- Stick

On August 22, Jim Bob released his 13th and 14th albums on the same day- Automatic and Stick. While this is a basic generalization, Automatic is in the mold of his last three albums- a series of narratives from everyday life in which Jim Bob can skewer society when it needs it and compliment the positive aspects we need to hear too. But Stick is a louder, noisier affair that is closer to the albums he made 30-some years ago as part of Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine. 

Songs like “Art” and “Last Day of the Tour” are pure glam rock stomp a la Slade and the Sweet and not altogether that much different from Carter USM’s 1991 album 30Something. 

Closer "There’s Not Enough Space in the Hall" brings the proceedings to a close with an (almost) life affirming singalong with a reference to Amazon Alexa thrown in (it’s Jim Bob after all). Opener “A Song by Me” is an expletive filled statement that would have opened a Carter album with the band in “power trio” mode. A song like “What a Sh*tshow” wouldn’t fit on Automatic lyrically or even musically (its melody similar to a punk reading of “I Had too Much to Dream Last Night” but we are better for having it. 

While Carter USM were one of my favorite bands of that era, they probably weren’t in my top five favorites. But as implausible as it seems, Jim Bob has been honing his craft. I would put him up against any songwriter today, and Stick is kind of the fun punky record but the lyrics are solid too. On Bandcamp, Jim Bob says ‘Automatic’ and ‘Stick’ are both the greatest album (sic) Jim Bob has ever made. He might not be wrong.