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The eponymous track of Lynyrd Skynyrd's 13th studio album opens with a tease of gritty gusto — a skank-nasty slide riff a few ghostly notes short of Led Zep's "In My Time of Dying." But it's a promising misnomer for a track — and album — that slides head-first into painfully awkward, Bible-Belt, good-ole-boy, "Yeehaw!" country-rock. The shit quality isn't much of a surprise: Skynyrd haven't released a listenable album since founder Ronnie Van Zant's plane-crash death (along with two other band members) in 1977. Under the command of Van Zant's younger brother Johnny (who took the reins in 1987), the once-venerable flagship of genuine, heartfelt, inventive Southern Rock have plummeted with no remorse into the grimy waters of Redneck Rock. On Dyin' Breed, they stoop to some depressing new lows: "Mississippi Blood" is a back-porch bluegrass-pop dud that sets the banjo back a century further than Deliverance. "Homegrown" is sub-Big & Rich rock-schlock, an unintentionally hilarious plea to a coon-huntin', God-fearin' country broad who hangs out "in her bare feet, sippin' sweet tea" and recognizes that "Jesus is the only one to save me." Meanwhile, Ronnie Van Zant rolls wildly in his grave. For God's sake, for America's sake, for Coon's sake, for Rock's sake — let's hope Last of a Dying Breed is an endangered species.
