Country Music gets complicated. There’s the purists that guard the gates like Cerberus, deciding what can and can’t be called country. The Gasoline Lollipops (GasPops to the initiated) decided that like their namesake, they’d soak those ideas in flammable liquid and set them on fire. “All the Misery Money Can Buy” relishes in genre bending. The Gasoline Lollipops' singer, Clay Rose, grew up with feet in two parts of the country, Colorado and Tennessee, the former where the GasPops seem to have claimed their home. Both places drip on the record as it alternates between a punk rock sense of social consciousness, with a folky sense of lyricism all while maintaining a soulful delivery.

What happens to a young man who’s raised in the passenger seat of an 18 wheeler while your dad sells pot to Willie Nelson and your mom brings you up in a hyper-conscious place like Boulder, Colorado? Apparently you have a crisis of consciousness that leads you exploring every direction at once. That, for a lot of artists, would lead to a disjointed struggle to find “a sound,” weaving in and out of genres and failing to grab any of them well. Somehow the GasPops dodged that trap, instead making a focused album that adheres to an overall aesthetic without getting too caught up in what genre-focused critics may chain them with.

The GasPops as a band has a diverse background. The drummer/percussionist, Kevin Matthews, works with jazz musicians and even the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, a well-educated guitarist that has worked with legends including The Sundowners, a bassist in Bradley Morse who has won awards at bluegrass competitions, and has a BA in Jazz, all spearheaded by the aforementioned Rose, who’s been working on the craft of songwriting, with a life to provide the prerequisite material to generate interest.

The record shines a light on a lot of the social contract's failings and misgivings. Rose, aware that the band’s sound may pull in a certain crowd that may be turned off by the leanings of his social stance, importantly points out the record and his views are not a condemnation, but instead meant to be a catalyst for conversation. When your record opens with the discussion of the failing of the current social class system, and refuses to let up as it transitions to a bluesy, soulful “Dying Young,” which laments the effects of man made climate change leading to Earth itself dying young, social consciousness isn’t an afterthought. Rose writes strong lyrics that burrow in and leave you thinking as you live with the record for a bit. I think what hits you will be subjective, but it’s hard to imagine you wouldn’t be able to find a place where Rose speaks to you on this record.

As a band who’s been recognized at the local level with a heavy critical ovation, won multiple awards and has been recognized in the Northern Front Range and Denver, Colorado, the GP's are certainly poised with this record to pull additional attention. “All The Misery Money Can Buy” was recorded in Louisiana and while the record may dodge being pigeonholed into a genre, it’s unabashedly soulful, with a healthy dose of Southern Rock grease. It’s a unique record that somehow feels familiar enough to immediately be palatable. There isn’t the same steep learning curve that comes with some genre-defying efforts, and I highly recommend giving it a hard listen when it hits on 9/11/20.

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