Reverend Horton Heat

Whole New Life Victory Looks like the devil lost this round.

Jim ‘Rev’ Heath has one of the weirdest and wildest resumes in all of rock’n’roll. How a humble, polite, pomade-abusing rockabilly cat from Dallas, Texas ended up on the Sub Pop label and touring with Marilyn Manson is probably the twistiest tale of the entire 1990s.

Two decades later, and he’s still out there, spreading sawdust on the floor and kickin’ up a fuss like it’s 1956 forever. With a thumping new band in which the good Rev and his upright bass-slapping left-hand man Jimbo Wallace are joined by piano basher Matt Jordan and frenetic drummer ‘RJ’ Contreras, The Rev’s twelfth album takes a long and wistful look backwards, concocting a positively sunny old-school rockabilly record full of barn- burners like the infectious, whooping Wonky and melodramatic, Roy Orbisonesque strollers like Don’t Let Go Of Me. It’s all so cheery and warm that you hardly miss the snarling psychobilly demons The Rev conjured a lifetime ago.