Album Review: Kid Rock - Rebel Soul

“The mule keeps kicking the chickens in the pen/let's rock all night and then do it again!” Your enjoyment of this album can be gauged by what you think of that lyric, the chorus to the opening track, Chickens In The Pen. Though indeed, if you were able to read it without moving your lips, how much do you really need to listen to Kid Rock's new record?

Beefy Americana guitar twang, straight up 4/4 rhythms throughout and lyrics that switch between self-aggrandising machismo nonsense and how fun it is to have fun, the Michigan native has never been one for evolution. Rebel Soul delivers on every suspicion you hold about the 41-year-old 'Kid' Rock; he loves America, bourbon, women, rocking and rolling.

The musician is safe (and fun) to knock, but problems arise when making fun of this album – it isn't really all that atrocious. It sucks, of course, but at least there's nothing quite as putrid here as 2008's All Summer Long, notwithstanding all the agonisingly trite rock clichés about women, drugs and booze. This is not a good record, despite Rock's own quote on the front of the album art proclaiming it as being “pretty f****** good in [his] humble opinion”. Track titles like God Save Rock N Roll, Cocaine And Gin and the painfully close-to-seven minutes long Mr. Rock N Roll are embarrassing to even read, let alone to have penned (one imagines). Kid Rock fans (and there must be some somewhere) will likely eat this one up. And isn't that just Kid's raison d'être? Honest superficiality and true pointlessness embraced en masse. As he repeats on 3 Catt Boogie, “There ain't nothin' changin'”.