Crooks

Rare is the musical portmanteau that triggers the gag reflex quite like “country rock,” but Crooks’ quick-and-dirty four-song EP exemplifies the genre at its hard-drinking, windswept best. It’s country from the Hank Williams Sr. school — damaged, dusty and bleary-eyed — injected with the stomp of Red River Street. Josh Mazour’s wounded Southern drawl anchors the perfect harmonies of opener “River Road” all the way through to closer “Bar Stool,” a honky-tonk swinger that calculatedly risks falling… Show more into Pat Green cliché but for a killer hook and Brian Salvi’s ace fiddle turn. But it’s “Downtown” that finds Crooks at their best — hard-edged and foreboding, with an operatic grandness driven home by Sam Alberts’ stirring trumpet.
-Patrick Caldwell, American-Statesman

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