Pitchfork

Though in hindsight a seminal punk band, Social Distortion's work was estimable but highly derivative. Ness' skills as a performer and songwriter lay largely in his sharp perception for the relationships between country, rockabilly and his beloved punk, rather than in the expansion of any of these musical worlds themselves. Take for an example "Ring of Fire" and "Ball and Chain" from Social D's eponymous 1990 comeback album. The songs appear back to back on the album; the former a cover of the Johnny Cash classic, the latter among Ness' own work-- a song Cash might have written if he were a punk. Nevermind that punk was perfected ten years before a lot of folks had even heard of Ness; here he worked a powerful combination merely by setting its context.

Therefore, it's of little wonder that, of his two solo releases in 1999, the Social Distortion frontman dedicated the entirety of one to his guitar heroes of yore. Unfortunately, Under the Influences, which features the songs of Hank Williams, Carl Perkins and Harlan Howard (among others), mostly lacks the power of his best work. There's something tired in Ness' faithful hero worship, despite the worthiness of his personal deities and the gravel in his throat. Constrained by tradition, Ness disallows himself his greatest abilities. Exploring the relationship between country and punk merely by resting his punk credentials over a lap steel is banal and beneath Ness' talent. Nowhere on the album is this more apparent than on Sonny Curtis' "I Fought the Law," which sputters next to the memory of the Clash's blistering rendition of the song.

The redeeming quality of the album comes in Ness' obvious labor of love and in the strength of the songs chosen themselves. Ness rarely blunders in his arrangements, and given the timelessness of the tracks, he's gifted enough to find success more than once. When he does, as on Carl Perkins' "Let the Jukebox Keep On Playing," it's easy to forgive his missteps. Interestingly, the album finishes with a countrified version of "Ball and Chain," reversing the dynamic of Ness' original take on it. In the early days, Ness imagined the country singer a punk; here, he's the imaging the punk a country singer. But while the former spoke simply to us all, regarding the close quarters inhabited by supposedly different types of music, the latter speaks mainly to Ness himself.