The Bootstrap Boys -- Some Boots
The Bootstrap Boys have never sounded better -- or bleaker -- on their recent album Some Boots. The tension between devil-may-care-defiance and existential angst may just be the molten core that keeps country music rotating.
Country music often centers love and loss, but Some Boots, the new release from the Bootstrap Boys, hits hard: it's the final recording featuring Nick Alexander's guitar work. (Jake told us about the band's processing his death in our recent interview.) Some Boots frolics in outlaw country's well-trodden paths: booze, loneliness, partying, the stultifying routine of rinsing and repeating...unless.
In fact, Some Boots opens up with the contemplative "Better Than," a rueful accounting of angry outbursts. The Boys are known for their take-no-shit honky-tonk attitude, but "Better Than" signals a new approach from the band, one that aims to reckon with the passage of time. Indeed, "Bootstrap Anthem" seeks to find the balance between partying hard and making it home in one piece.
The album gleefully rambles through sardonic breakup songs but there are moments were that introspection keeps peeking through: "New Years," a meditation on getting by and getting through, is all the more poignant knowing what the Boys and their loved ones have been through since the song was recorded.
"Black Lung" is the standout here – though "Poverty Line's" chicken-scratching guitars is a close second. Here, the Boys' chops and self-assurance contrasts sharply with the song's existential dread – and that, perhaps, is the molten core of country music that keeps the entire genre moving. No matter how much we need to put up with and get past, those moments of darkness do show up from to time – it's up to us what to do with them.
Bootstrap Boys – Official, Bandcamp, Instagram, TikTok, Spotify, Apple Music
