Tattoos & Scars

Tattoos & Scars

This swaggering, tough-singing Kentucky duo consists of a pair of impassioned but unremarkable singers--Eddie Montgomery (brother of country star John Michael Montgomery) and his longtime musical associate Troy Gentry. They deliver a rowdy, whiskey-drenched, antiheroic brand of rocked-up honky-tonk that unabashedly conjures up memories of Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams Jr., and other rough-and-rowdy country "outlaws" of yesteryear. Montgomery and Gentry wear these influences well on serviceable cuts like "Hillbilly Shoes" and "Didn't Your Mama Tell Ya," but do them a disservice on unremarkable ballads like "Trying to Survive" and "If a Broken Heart Could Kill," and on their derivative-sounding cover of Charlie Daniels's "All Night Long." The utter lack of original material on their debut CD is somewhat suspect, yet on killer cuts like the painfully confessional "Self Made Man" and the morally insightful "Daddy Won't Sell The Farm" they do show a few sparks of innovation amid all the ragged honky-tonk smoke and fire. --Bob Allen