Here to Bleed is another back-to-basics rock album in a few-years-wide window of back-to-basics rock albums, but no one told I Can Lick Any Son of a Bitch in the House's lead tumbler Mike Damron that some basics are less fashionable than others. Of course, I can hear Damron's "think I give a fuck?"-style grunt right now. So there you have it.

Basically, Damron likes Southern rock and political heat, even though he's more Neil Young-left than Lynyrd Skynrd-right; he likes bluegrass, mud, Johnny Cash, Social Distortion, buck-toothed guitar wails, blues and solid, warm production. He's assembled a top-notch band with Portland, Oregon regulars Flapjack TX on drums, Mole Harris on bass, "Handsome" Jon Burbank on guitar and, most notably, David Lipkind on harmonica -- not a skinny kid with a penchant for blowing, but a real master of the instrument whose powerful, almost abrasive style adds gasoline to the fire on tracks like "Twerp" and "American Fuck Machine".

Damron's whiskey-and-smoke-fed voice consistently fits his mood -- backwards-looking, devastatingly cynical, but staunchly independent and alive and kicking at the same time -- and the music follows suit, always in step but never lacking variety. "American Fuck Machine" takes a vicious stab at plastic culture without sounding preachy, and the punk-blues riffing from Burbank, combined with sharp-as-tacks blowing from Lipkind, adds salt to its inflicted wound. In "In the Mud" and "Hayward, Ca '76", Damron gets relatively sentimental about times, fathers and grandfathers past; the first breaks out the fiddle and the banjo to celebrate the happy memories, and the second mourns their loss with a drunken blues stomp reminiscent of Jack White's early work. "Dear Mr. Heston" and "The Ballad of Courtney Taylor", besides naming names, work themselves into a steaming fury over issues other hip priests won't touch; the first romps along to a spitting NRA indictment while the second attacks celebrity cred in a letter addressed to the Dandy Warhols' Courtney Taylor. But maybe "Things That Fail" expresses Damron's worldview best: after a list of semi-spoken failing things and a hopeful conclusion that "love is the key", all set to distilled blues riffing and minimal drumming, Damron lets out in a blood-curdling wail -- "love it failed!"

Maybe love failed, but at least rock music hasn't. By taking up an unhip cross (Led Zeppelin, Thin Lizzy, Social D., bluegrass), Mike Damron and I Can Lick Any Son of a Bitch in the House are reviving the spirit that has always been there, but has lately been ignored. The results are at once refreshing and classic.