It ain’t easy finding an album to review that hasn’t been done yet. It’s harder than you’d think. But as I poured a class of The Pogues, an Irish Whiskey, a song popped into my head. It would make sense if it was “Streams of Whiskey” or “Sally MacLennane.” Rather, it was a slow, instrumental called “Richcreek” by Black Irish Texas, that played in my conscious as I took the first sip. And that’s how I decided to review The Good, the Bad and the Indifferent by the Austin-based band. The band released the album in the spring of 2017, followed by a relentless tour that took them throughout the US, over to Europe, and back to the US again, finishing off at the Muddy Roots Festival in Tennessee.

Just one glance at the back cover of the cd makes you realize how eclectic this band is. Among the magnificent seven members in the illustration is a fiddler with a mohawk, an upright bass player, and a Richenbacher playing, suspender wearing lead singer. They are rockabilly. They are punk. They are Irish. They are Texans. They are all of these things and yet they are none of them. They are a tough band to nail down. But one thing is clear. They know what they are doing and they do it well.

Though the album is only eight songs clocking in at 28 minutes, it highlights everything the band has to offer. It begins, as many of their live shows begin, with the theme to The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. As the track starts, with the toms driving the rhythm, you can picture the band on stage in a smoky haze, cigarette dangling from James Fitzsimmons’s mouth, slowly preparing you for what’s to come. That leads into Ain’t Gonna Last, a rockabilly swinger with punk rock attitude and gritty vocals, followed by Join the British Army, a song that could be found on any of Shane MacGowan’s albums. These two uptempo songs flow effortlessly into the next two tracks, which are mostly instrumental. The aforementioned Richcreek evokes images of sipping whiskey on the front porch, while Yates elicits a Guinness-fueled conversation in the corner of an Irish pub. Side two, or the second half of the album, starts with the political rocker No One’s Having Any Fun before moving onto a cover of And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda. The song starts off slow, as most versions of this song do, but shifts tempo early and often in a way that only Black Irish Texas could play it...in a punkabilly fury. The album ends with the raucous and clever Don’t Too Ra Li To Me.

Somehow eight songs seems like the perfect amount, yet it is not enough. But that’s the beauty in it. The album flows seamlessly through all of the band’s influences and ends leaving you with the desire to listen again and again.