That Hayseed Dixie have managed to survive long enough to release five albums is largely down to their always-engaging live show. That’s not it, though. Behind the novelty act façade lies an excellent band made up of four very talented musicians and an ability to make other people’s and their own songs effortlessly catchy and memorable.

With the introduction of more original material on 2005’s A Hot Piece Of Grass suggested that the band were aware that the joke would soon wear thin. Not so, it seems. Weapons Of Grass Destruction makes no move to present Hayseed Dixie as a more “serious” band and in places it holds them back like a lead weight.

The album opens brilliantly with a cover of the Sex Pistols’ Holidays In The Sun, which turns the song from punk classic into something quite beautiful and their attack on Strawberry Fields Forever by The Beatles is laudable, even if it does turn into Cotton Eye Joe at the end, but the rest of the album doesn’t connect in the way older material did.

The future of Hayseed Dixie demands that they begin to evolve before they become the same kind of shocking self-parody (of a parody) that The Darkness did. Drop the costumes and dubious back story, guys. You’re good enough to do without them.

Label: Cooking Vinyl
Website: www.hayseed-dixie.com
Release date: 9th April 2007

Tracklist:

1. Holidays In The Sun
2. Devil Woman
3. I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’
4. She Was Skinny When I Met Her
5. Strawberry Fields Forever
6. Before Your Old Man Gets Home
7. Breaking The Law
8. More Pretty Girls Than One
9. Down Down
10. Walking Cane
11. Paint It Black
12. Hungover Brokedown
13. Poison
14. The Rider Song