The title of the second track on the Asphalt Plains EP from the Quad Cities-based garage-country band Them Som'Bitches is "D.G.A.F.," with the first three letters standing for "Don't Give a." You can figure out the rest, and it's about that subtle. For good measure, the phrase turns up in the next song, too.
Despite that symptomatic coarseness, the six songs on Asphalt Plains represent a modest achievement, despair and nihilism delivered with a wink and elevated by consistently engaging performance. Over 20 minutes, the band's shit-kicking aesthetic unerringly evokes a very particular picture: for me, aimless folks marking time in a trailer on the scrubland, with no other sign of human activity.
That's nearly explicit in "Buzzard Ridge," with animal-call samples taking the roles of instruments - and doing it well. I particularly like the owl, which appears to think it's a background vocalist, and the howling. These fanciful flourishes all over the EP are a bit on-the-nose, but that's part of their charm; we ain't talking high art.
Even without the sound effects, though, the punks-doing-country songs suggest a dual nature: the barren beauty of the American Southwest invaded by loners with nothing better to do than drink and shoot stuff.
