Spectacular Sadness of

Rex Hobart & The Misery Boys | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 19, 2000)
• Original Release Date: September 19, 2000
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Bloodshot Records
• ASIN: B00004XSOX
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #163,315 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sadly Spectacular, September 27, 2000

By 

Parrish Baker (Kansas City, MO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spectacular Sadness of (Audio CD)

Rex Hobart has been well known around the country for several years, but especially here in his heartland of Kansas City. There's a good reason the seedy bars and the dives of our town have been such a good home to Rex and the Misery Boys--the twangy, lonesome sound burrows under your skin and into your soul, but at the same time strikes up a rhythm in the feet until the sawdust floor beats with the busking of everyone's boots. 'Barstow Barstool' speaks to the lover he flees and leaves behind; 'Here Comes Nothing' is a brisk, almost cheerful tale of the precise moment when unfaithfulness is born. 'Bridge Burner's Union (Local 36)' is just as sprightly as it is sad. Rex and the Misery Boys can combine that light bounce with the heavy drag at the heart., which is spectacular in a live show. This is, in short, an album not to be missed not only by the honky-tonk and country aficianado, but by anyone who has loved, and lost, and loved and lost again until the loving and the losing can no longer be told apart.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still one of the best country singers around, September 25, 2002

By 

DJ Joe Sixpack (...in Middle America) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Spectacular Sadness of (Audio CD)

On his previous album, "Forever Always Ends," Hobart's wry, tounge-in-cheek overstatements of traditional country "hard luck" themes -- going to your ex-lover's wedding, etc. -- were handled about as skillfully as on Dwight Yoakam's "A Long Way Home," and with nearly as much musical panache. He doesn't disappoint on this follow-up, although he does come a bit closer to overplaying his hand lyrically; the balancing act is made more precarious by his embrace of Glen Campbell-derived folk-countrypolitan stylings, as opposed to the bottle-busting, galloping honkytonk of the last album. By slowing the music down, he gives the listener more time to weigh the relative merits of sincerity vs. wit in lyrics like "I'm Not Drunk Enough To Say I Love You" and "The One And Lonely You"... Plus, these Misery Boys take their picking and plunking very seriously, and just the sound of that fine pedal steel alone is worth the price of admission.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Favorite for Years, March 11, 2011

By 

Scott R. Moreland (Monterey, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Spectacular Sadness of (Audio CD)

I've owned this album for years now, and it still demands regular booking on my car's CD changer. I've been that Midwesterner that attempted "escape" to California, only to find that the border towns and broken dreams a fitting, if not exactly uplifting, symbol of life's sometimes melodramatic realities (Barstow Barstool is my favorite track). Hobart's lyrics continue to aspire to and express the outer limits of emotional stimulation in a musical era defined by blase disregard for romance, and his reward is our undying, nostalgic affection. I keep wondering when I'll get too old and numb to enjoy the Boys' music, and praying that I don't. Rex Hobart and the Misery Boys are a tonic for sentimental old fools.