7/10

If you’re going to tackle a covers record, you’d better have the guts and the personality to make it your own. Cowboy Mouth not only rise to that challenge on 'Cover Yo Azz', they blow the saloon doors clean off the hinges. Across ten tracks, the band swerves between barnstorming country grit and punk-rock snarl, pulling off a set that feels equal parts back-porch jam and sweaty dive-bar rager.

From start to finish, this full-length a full-blown sonic relocation program. Their take on The Replacements’ 'Can’t Hardly Wait' lands squarely between the band’s ragged live charm and the later brass-tinged polish, while 'Fat Bottomed Girls' hauls Queen’s swagger from the streets of West London to a beer-slicked porch somewhere deep in Dixie.

But the real magic happens in the unexpected transformations. Cher’s 'Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves' trades in its lush, dark storytelling for a grungier alt-rock edge that adds teeth without losing the drama. And 'My Way', which is usually so often a bloated, over-sung standard, gets the Cowboy Mouth treatment, swinging from ramshackle acoustic shuffle to heads-down country-punk boogie that feels more Sid Vicious than Sinatra.

The setlist is a jukebox fever dream, jumping from R.E.M.’s 'Perfect Circle' to The Who’s 'The Real Me', and even finding a way to make the Hootie & the Blowfish classic 'City By a River' feel like a rowdy, late-night anthem. It’s an exercise in attitude as much as musicianship, each song threaded through Cowboy Mouth’s own irreverent, genre-blurring lens.

On 'Cover Yo Azz', the band are dressing these tracks in ripped denim and taking them for a joyride. By the time the needle lifts, you’re wondering if they were always meant to sound this way.