This album came out two decades ago. Here’s what I had to say about it back then (with some minor editing):
“History is written by the winners; this is a loser’s song,” confesses Jon Langford on Walking on Hell’s Roof Looking at the Flowers, the smartly titled fifth song on the fifth album from Chicago alt-country rabble-rousers Waco Brothers. Well, if Langford and the boys are losers, at least they aren’t going down without a fight.
Electric Waco Chair is a sharp-edged spur stuck square in the flank of insurgent country, with this star-studded lineup — Mekon and Pine Valley Cosmonaut Langford, former Graham Parker drummer Steve Goulding, ex-Jesus Jones bassist Alan Doughty, KMFDM’s Mark Durante on pedal steel, singer-guitarist Dean Schlabowske and mandolin god Tracey Dear — delivering some of their strongest songs yet. And some of their most unforgettable, from the scrappy defiance of Where in the World and Make Things Happen to the two-fisted drinking songs like Where the Mighty Fall and When I Get My Rewards. “At the peak of my popularity, I’m crumbling into dust,” grumbles Jon on It’s Not Enough. Ruination never sounded so damn good.
