When Hammond-based rockers Snake Hat slithered away for good, the group’s guitarist and songwriter Bill Robison had beaucoup originals dangling aimlessly about, which he jokingly referred to as vestigial limbs. To further extend the joke, the jovial punster thought of his songs as suspended in limbo, not knowing if they would ever surface on a recording, hence the clever play-on- words title.
With a little help from friends and family—most notably Robison’s brother—multi-instrumentalist and engineer Tucker, Vestigial Limbo is a full-tilt, no-holds-barred rock album rooted in the ’70s and early ’80s. After that, Limbo breaks the mold of what rock albums have typically been: three, maybe four verses, and sometimes a single line repeated ad nauseam to be the entire chorus. It’s not uncommon for Robison’s songs to stretch to nine or a dozen, or more verses, indicating he has plenty to say and nary a pixel will be left out. It’s never overbearing where it’s c’mon dude, just get to the guitar solo! Some lines are a scrabble player’s delight, dotted with pontificating 50-dollar vocabulary words like thaumaturgy, transmutation, and phlegmatic, not commonly heard in cranked-up, electric guitar-fueled rockers. Yet, 50-dollar words or otherwise, Robison meters it well.
There are historical references, like the medieval science of alchemy on “Quicksilver,” which, sonically, is a blend of a melodic Ramones tune and the fuzz fortress of Hüsker Dü. A couple of prevailing themes surface from time to time, like being comfortable in one’s own skin on “French Quarter Girl” and the odes to his two daughters with “Birthday” and “Gravy.”
The other prevailing theme is protest. “Dives (pronounced ‘Dee-vays’) “Paves the Way” is about the filthy rich dude in scripture who could give a damn about the unfortunate, oppressed and needy. “Church” is the other magnificent protest tune. Over an electrifying frenetic bass run and African rhythms, Robison calls out the artificially pious who do not walk the walk they talk. Though Robison wrote it a few years ago, so many lines fit today’s state of affairs like: “You own the president courts and congress … You even own the vote but who owns you?”
If there was an award for the funniest tune of the year, “Gout” would have to be considered. Over a slippery bed of funky horns played by cousins Kenny and Scott Robison, Robison opens with a rhythmically catchy set of lines, “Good god I got the gout/ Last of the medieval woes,” that conjures shades of a miserable, gout-stricken King Henry the VIII. A verse later, Robison drops the hilarious self-inflicted confession that’s the crux of the matter: “Pork chops, ham and gravy/ Barbecued ribs and bacon/ I got a healthcare crisis/ All of my own making.”
Ironically, for a song titled “Not Good Enough,” it certainly is a dandy, attention-grabbing opener. The roadhouse rocker has an unintentional Stones-y influence with Robison’s open-G tuning, Keith Richards’ signature tuning, and Tucker playing the part of Nicky Hopkins pounding the ivories. If Robison should ever have another batch of vestigial limbs suspended in limbo, he knows what to do, just ring up the fam and friends and go for another round.
