Empire Builders

Metro
Mon 1 November 2004
An American musician who spends his time in a glam-country band wearing mascara and lipstick beneath his Stetson is hardly seeking the approval of his redneck compatriots. The Scorchers, featuring Ringenberg, formed in 1981 and attempted to find a gap in the market for a hillbilly New York Dolls. With their pulverising riffs and bad-boy aura, their critical status peaked with their mini LP Fervor.

Years later a solo Ringenberg re-emerged with A Pocketful Of Soul (2000) a homespun, acoustic affair, with echoes of gospel. It was the sound of a singer reconnected with his roots. Even by his own standards, however, Jason Ringenberg’s new album Empire Builders is a provocative work.

Empire Builders shows the two sides of Ringenberg’s divided psyche: there are crunching rock numbers fuelled by distaste so strong that it threatens to undermine his sardonic pose, including a raucous tribute to Native American guitarist Link Wray, a pioneer of grunge. But at least one song, Eddie Rode The Orphan Train, fills the highest purpose of folk music. The story - of an orphan abandoned in the Deep South during the Depression – transcends America, trancends the family saga and gets to the heart of the human condition.

Mike Butler.