The album opens with a brisk shake of maracas which sound like a rattlesnake coiled and ready to strike. This opens out into a snarling screed about a poor family bouncing around the rock bottom of the poverty line, continually getting denied any help that would allow them to pulle themselves up. “No help, coming, honey get the gun,” they harmonize, voices full of loathing and disdain, “better get the money and run.” “There's bedbugs crawling in the bed that you made,” Dave leers at another would-be welfare mother, who finds nothing's well and few things fair in . There is a strong sense on this album of people who are fed up, but who are not defeated. These are people who have merely chosen to play by a different set of rules. Even a simple love song like “The Rest of Your Life” is shot through with a reckless sense that it is careening towards a Bonnie and Clyde ending. “She wants to be the baby, it could be she has rabies,” they ponder in “Burn, Oh Junk Pile, Burn,” a sneering ballad that does Those Darlin's “Snaggle Toothed Mama” one better. Golightly has a voice that mosies between Jenny Taylor's almost cloyingly sweet vocals and Wanda Jackson's rough growl. This works well, keeping the listener slightly off balance while building her characters towards the edge of their frazzled nerves. She is biting, almost feral as she evicts an ex-lover in “Get Out of the House.” Then she turns around, sweet at sugar as she explains it to him, “Out of all of my mistakes, your the only one I'll never be making again.” Ten of the twelve tracks were penned by the band, which shows itself in the sense of cohesion. Rather than a collection of songs, these are more a collection of short stories. They save their covers for the end, and at least one of them is well worth the wait. They do a gloriously boozy rendition of “The Lord Knows I'm (We're) Drinking,” Bill Anderson's ballad taunting the gossipy, tight assed “Mrs. Johnson.”
No Help Coming is not an easy album to figure out, both celebrating and mocking those we have come to know as trailer trash. They pull from a group of artists—early Drive By Truckers, Fred Eaglesmith and the like—who wore their rue with a satirical edge that first embraced then twisted stereotypes. Just as the Drive By Truckers never shy away from a good incest storyline, Holly Golightly and The Brokeoff's never worry about cleaning their characters up. They aren't here to make heartwarming stories, nor are they hear to teach you a lesson about tolerance. Their songs present their characters in all their barefoot, loud and nasal glory, and leave the rest to the listener. This is not an album for everyone, or even an album for most people, but it is a luscious reminder of when Alt-Country was actually alternative, not merely the country music mainstream didn't play.
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