THE BOTTLE ROCKETS w/ JAMES McMURTRY – Wed., March 30, 2011 – High Noon Saloon

In a country where interstates don't take you to new places, but to the same places, where everywhere you go you've already been or you've just left, The Bottle Rockets' new album absolutely nails a sound and a vibe with a palpable sense of place. Lean Forward is suffused with the determination and resilience of their distinctly midwestern roots; theirs is a celebration of pragmatism and tempered optimism, not the delusions and exhortations of glassy eyed zealots—they aren't going to fall for that. Oh, it's a flat out, smoking rock record, too.

Lean Forward continues the Rockets’ creative resurgence ignited by 2006’s Zoysia. Reunited with producer Eric “Roscoe” Ambel (who ran the knobs on the Bottle Rockets’ seminal albums The Brooklyn Side and 24 Hours A Day), the Bottle Rockets do what no other band does better--look into the hearts and minds and faces of the dying small towns in America and craft populist anthems with the sympathetic eye of Woody Guthrie and sonic stomp of Crazy Horse. They are songs that demand the windows be rolled down and the volume turned up. And with the hooks, you’ll wonder how they make such problems sound so good …

With their 15th anniversary now in the rear view mirror, the Bottle Rockets show no signs of letting up. Lean Forward is an album that celebrates the forces of erosion not earthquakes, of the marathon not the sprint. Honed in their towns and on their back roads, it is distinctly the Bottle Rockets. Rather than be confining, this identity broadens the appeal and strength of their music far from their backyards into our own. Their specificity speaks universally and the message is a simple one: Lean forward, man, because it beats falling back.

"The Bottle Rockets recount ordinary problems—sometimes romantic misadventures and inner turmoil, but also more characteristically, day-to-day hassles and joys--with a self-deprecating, good-hearted wit." The New York Times

"No other band personifies the hard-working, low-key mystique of the insurgent country/alt-country scene better than The Bottle Rockets." The Onion AV Club