Album Notes

The Cartridge Family's "Shine Like a Bottle" takes you back to a time when hyphens had not yet been invented, an era when a description as straightforward as "rock and roll" would suffice. Here's what you don't get with Shine Like a Bottle: A whole lot of frills. Here's what you do get: Guitars that could never be accused of being shy. Sneaky hooks. Keyboards with the same personality as the guitars. Echoes of the Faces and Blonde on Blonde and rock bands that like country music but don't feel like they have to prove it and a dozen other things that represent what's always been good in the music world. "There's a hole in the soul of rock 'n' roll," opines the Cartridge Family on "American West," which appears on the band's forthcoming record, Shine Like a Bottle. But it sure doesn't sound that way — the lads with a name that nods to two legendary American television families, Partridge and Simpson, imbue their decidedly Southern rock with a heaping helping of slick Memphis soul. The touchstones are obvious — classic rock a la The Faces, The Stones and Big Star; electrified alt-country a la Drive-By Truckers or A.M.-era Wilco — but superfluous; The Cartridge Family rocks something fiercely its own. This is a band that works hard and plays hard. And because of that, Shine Like a Bottle, like the Cartridge Family, is serious fun.