Review: Launch

How is it that country music which has its roots in the American southeast gets shifted to southern California for the late-'60s-early-'70s and is now being reinterpreted by a group of Englishmen in the year 2001? How is it that the country music establishment plays up the use of big dumb cowboy hats, cowboy boots, and line dancing to promote the music, when it's so readily apparent that these are the worst, least-sincere aspects of the whole shebang? And how is that while the Eagles have outsold every other band on the planet, they are still less of an influence on country-rock than such low-selling "cult" acts as the Flying Burrito Brothers and even the Buffalo Springfield? The questions may well be unanswerable, but the pedal steel powered, harmony-dominated tunes of Simon Petty and his cohorts proves something that defies logic, too. Minibar wrings heightened emotion and melody out of alt-country--a genre usually defined by limits not by testing them--and comes out with 11 tunes that shimmer with doses of melancholy and pure pop without a "Yahoo!" in sight. (Editor's Rating: 93)

From Launch.com