Grady, Y.U. So Shady?

I’ve heard bands before that blur the line between Southern-fried rock and the blues — hell, Stevie Ray Vaughan rode that line at times — but few obliterate it as completely as Austin’s Grady. They grab hold of a fistful of downhome Delta blues licks, drown ’em in cheap whiskey, the run ’em through Godzilla-sized amps they borrowed from Pantera and a bunch of pedals they stole from some hapless grunge band, and play ’em like they’re channeling Junior Brown (which, honestly, gives far too little credit to guitar virtuoso frontman/singer Gordie Johnson). End result? Bluesy, thick as hell, wall-shaking, hillbilly sludge-rock that sounds equally inspired by the Queens of the Stone Age and Robert Johnson.

And like I said, while there’re folks out there that do similar things, sure, it’s hard to imagine ’em pulling it off as deftly as this. I dearly love The Black Keys — who drink from the same raw, heavy, amplified-blues well as Johnson and crew — but I always get the feeling they’re content to sit at the end of the bar and drown their sorrows. They come off like genre purists, to boot; with those guys, every move feels like it’s done with reverence to blues masters past.

Grady, on the other hand, isn’t willing to just sit there at the bar, but rather drains its collective glass and smashes it in the face of some big loudmouth jerkoff a few stools down. Not for any real reason, of course, but just to start some shit and get fists flying. And the band’s music’s like that, like a drunken bar brawl nobody can remember starting or really wants to finish.

The guys (well, and girl, but drummer Nina Singh’s a recent addition to the band) in Grady throw everything they love into the mix, from the heavy, crushingly bassy rock to the sun-stroked stoner metal to the most basic, rootsy blues imaginable, and it all fucking works. “Three Minute Song,” for one fine, fine example, steers a Mötörhead-style stomp-groove into the stratosphere, incorporating country-boy harmony vocals with tales of boozing it up and partying down out on the road.

Then there’s “Woman Got My Devil,” which sounds for all the world like Thin Lizzy if they were from somewhere in the Piney Woods of East Texas, with a great high-pitched guitar line that mirrors the vocals and a shaggy-dog story about a guy whose woman gets kidnapped by the Devil, only to discover she’s too much to handle and kick her back out of Hell. (Hence the title.) And “Reach Out Yo Hand,” an amped-up gospel boogie that sees frontman Johnson playing tent-revival preacher in some alternate universe, all over speeding, rockabilly-esque guitars and four-on-the-floor drums. And “Western Cowboy,” a tribal, electrified country-rocker that could kick Toby Keith’s flabby ass without even getting up out of its seat.

Craziest of all, Y.U. So Shady? isn’t new; it’s actually an expanded version of Grady’s 2006 debut, re-released with a couple of fiery extra live tracks on punk/oddball label Alternative Tentacles apparently at the insistence of Jello Biafra, who loves the damn band. So these folks have been out there all this time, and this is the first I’ve heard? Damn.