Bloodshot Bill - So Fed Up
Goner Records
Released on June 13th, 2025
Montreal’s Bloodshot Bill has been skirtin’ and flirtin’ the subterranean fringe frontiers of rock and roll for nearly 3 decades. A true renegade of outlier rock and roll music, Bill embodies the spirits, ghouls and ghosts of our RnR forebears, hauling them out like a collector at a flea market. On So Fed Up, Bill coughs, wheezes, sneezes and sputters 12 tracks of grit, grease, and sleaze into our olfactory. And it smells, dare I say, quite good.
Recorded straight to tape at his own SIN Studio, Bill sounds like a man who has spent more than his fair share time in the slime. The album is a spectacle, it leaks oil and spews dirty gas, but like an old Chevy, when it revs into full gear, oh baby, you can feel the quality. Things were made different back then, no doubt, and you can hear it on this album. No production gimmickry will be found here. These tunes are stripped to their bones, like the skeletal frames of deceased greasers, who have just emerged from a Vat of Valvoline. Tremolo-laden guitar, upright bass, loose drum work, the occasional plunky piano, and Bill’s ramblin’ riffin’ conspire to form a well oiled machine out of these bare bones. Bill sounds more than comfortable in the guise of the r ’n’ r outcast, animating and illuminating us with his vintage vantage as a screw-loosened master of ceremonies rocking a sock-hop in purgatory. He opens his mouth and a veritable deluge of vernacular spills forth. But this is no psychobabble. This is the trained tongue of a lewd and lascivious linguist, 17 albums deep. Bill embodies unsavoury characters with such flavour. Pervy, nervy, rude and lewd, crotchety and ornery, Bill lays ‘em out like a creepy croupier with a fresh deck of nudie cards.
I first saw Bill in Montreal in the early 2000’s, performing as a one man band wrapped like a mummy with a couple of gals wearing titty tassels dancing and cavorting around him. I thought: “How can something so unsavoury be so tasty?!” It just is, I suppose. Glad to hear you’re still flaunting it, Bill.
