The Gourds are to Austin what the Morning 40 Federation is to New Orleans – a hellbent krewe of carnival hucksters and word-besotted street punks who play sloppy-smart party music that the Gourds’ Kevin Russell rightly calls “red-eyed soul.” But, where M40 writes paeans to the to the gritty charms of the once-and-future Ninth Ward, the Gourds find inspiration in their own hill country backyard, where folks “Burn the Honeysuckle,” do the “Hooky Junk,” and balance a “plate of bacon and a banjo on my knee.”

Their eighth studio album finds the Gourds at the top of their game. They’re still full of left-field surprises like the bluegrass spin on Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” that put them on the map in 2000, but they’re not afraid to play it straight and let their sheer musicality shine through. Songs like “New Roommate,” with its litany of housemates from hell – the humorless lesbian, the deadbeat who “couldn’t buy a bag of farts” – are classic Gourds’ riffs on the pitfalls and pratfalls of daily life. “Stab” gets just as much mileage out of a simple mandolin and fiddle showdown, while “Old Patriarch” proves the band can write achingly beautiful melodies. Old fans needn’t worry that the Gourds have mellowed with age, however. The revved-up opener “Declineometer” sets the tone for an album whose highlight is “Shake the Chandelier,” a raucous shout-out to fellow Texan Doug Sahm that rocks as hard as “She’s About a Mover,” the Sir Douglas Quintet hit that inspired it.