The Bottle Rockets

Like their buy-’em-by-the-gross namesake, the Bottle Rockets have been up, and they’ve been down. After a few years marked by label struggles, members lost and gained, and songs that were audaciously quiet, this year finds them ascending with a new Bloodshot CD, Zoysia — named for that kind of grass that also keeps coming back. Their music originally sprang roughly from the same muddy St. Louis/western Illinois scene that spawned Uncle Tupelo, and from the beginning, Bottle Rockets’ fans have wanted the band’s music twangy, gritty as hell, and Crazy Horse loud. The band’s new stuff, with its return to raucousness (like “Better Than Broken”) oughta stop those firework fights every bit as efficiently as somebody’s mom coming out the back door.