Billy Allen + The Pollies [EDIT]

One Liner:  Excellent alt-country band from Muscle Shoals (but fronted by a soul singer)

Wikipedia Genre:  No Wikipedia, but alt country, americana, alt rock, indie

Home: Muscle Shoals, Alabama

Poster Position: 19
Weekend Two Only.
Saturday at 12:40.

Honda Stage.

Thoughts: Well, that is sort of annoying.  I did a full review of the Pollies - see below - without noticing that the plus sign between Billy Allen and The Pollies, on the lineup poster, is bolded.  Every artist is separated by a plus sign!  That is not great when you are then using a plus sign to denote that two artists are joined together!  Whatever.  So, Billy met the lead singer of the Pollies years ago at a bar, they struck up a friendship and partnership, and so they're doing this thing together now.  Only 5 songs available to stream on Spotify, and one of them is the very clear winner of the streaming battle.  "People, Turn Around" with 640k streams.

Strong voice and sounds good, but if I am being honest I really liked what I heard from the Pollies on their own!  See that below.

Like a young and raw Ryan Adams fronting a young and raw Drive By Truckers.  Has some Wilco strains here and there too, a little Turnpike Troubadours.  After running through their stuff a few times, this feels like the kind of band I would keep around.  Nothing terribly flashy going on, but just consistently solid rock and roll and lyrics.

Not a lot of albums, even though they have been around a lot longer than many of the other bands on this poster.  2012's Where the Lies Begin, 2015's Not Here, 2018's Transmissions, and 2020's From the Guest Bedroom.  That last one, as you can probably guess, is a pandemic album.  Ends up being really fun, because it includes a number of cover songs that are left-field picks.  Like you're bopping along listening to a nice little Americana tune, and then Nirvana's "On a Plain" or Billy Idol's "Eyes Without a Face" or Prince's "Cream" pops up and piques the interest.  I like it.  Neil Young's "Unknown Legend" is on here too, and is their most popular tune on Spotify right now - they nail it.

The first disc is definitely more a country/alt-country sound.  The second album has their most popular tune by a long ways - "Jackson" - has 200k streams.

Good one, but not as good as some other tunes in here.  It must have gotten picked up on a playlist or something.  A little jammy at the end.  "Lost" is also on that album, and has 52k streams for second place.  The third album's top track is "Hold on My Heart," with 32k.

This album has an all around good sound - a little cleaner and better produced maybe.  Apparently, according to one article, someone in the band was also in Alabama Shakes - Ben Tanner, who used to be on keyboards.  Now they have a different dude.  Also on this album, the ending groove in "Summertime Suicide" made me look up from what I was doing and kind of bop along to it.  This is really enjoyable stuff.  Hard to believe a band this good is so entirely ignored...  I'd go see it live for sure.