(Birdman)

www.birdmanrecords.com/

Chapel Hill's Spider Bags are the musical cousins of The Dexateens and the Drive-By Truckers. Bands that have taken Southern rock and turned it on its ear. The SB's grind in some punk and blues to the genre to reformulate a seriously, deliriously, intoxicating concoction. Dan McGee and his five piece band of drunken reprobates are back with their sophomore release and offer up a more mature, better produced and slightly more subdued follow-up to their acclaimed Celebration of Hunger album from 2007.

The original version of this album, which was tentatively titled Midnight Moving Skies, contained 13 tunes. With the final mix, winnowing out some chaff and measuring songs lengths, Dan told me he thought they wound up with the perfect end result with these 11 songs. Goodbye is in many ways superior, and yet in some ways not, because this ripening of musical style from Celebration is quite conspicuous. It's not as "sloppy" and wild, for one thing. It really is like saying goodbye to the Bags you thought you knew and loved, yet excited by their evolving to a new plane.

Their playing and unique use of instruments from song to song really grabs your attention. A slower number, "Hammer and Nails" sweeps you away with its plunking banjo and scratchy fiddle. You want wild, there's the galloping, country punk of "Nowhere Nobody Nothing" and "Dishrags"' slow beginning belies the snotty, head-bobbing punk anthem that launches about one minute in. McGee is no slouch with lyrics either, throwing out serious life observances twisted with his wry and irreverent wit. Goodbye grows on you with just a couple of listens and you quickly realize this is an evolution that you can embrace.

They also recently released a single, "Teenage Eyes" b/w "Eileen" on Odessa Records and will release the "Dog In The Snow" 7" this winter. (You can check out "Teenage" and "Dog" at their MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/spiderbags.)

Standout Tracks: "Hammer and Nails," "Hey Delinquents," "Dishrag" BARRY ST. VITUS