Countrysides by Cracker

Countrysides, the 2003 album from Cracker, finds David Lowery and Johnny Hickman, the singer and guitarist who got the band going in 1990, pulling up a stool at the end of the bar and letting the twang do the talking. Cracker had always smuggled country, blues and folk in under the rock, punk and psychedelia, and this time the country half runs the show: a loose, sun-bleached alternative country record where Lowery's dry, deadpan drawl sits easy over Hickman's guitar and the snark of the old modern rock singles gives way to a slow sway.

It arrived after O' Cracker Where Art Thou? and before Greatest Hits Redux, and the song that caught rock radio's ear was the gleefully crude "Ain't Gonna Suck Itself", about as cheeky a title as the band ever put on a sleeve.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.