Their music is often bitter, aggressive, even frightening, yet at times completely spiritual. Flemmons’ lyrics are marked by a profound, often dirge-like sadness, but this isn’t fucking emo, folks. And he might sing, with a distinctively Southern accent — songs that mention someone getting his “head cut off on the barbed wire” or someone “shooting and drinking” (in that order) — but The Baptist Generals sure as fuck ain’t country. Or alt-country. Or any of that stupid shit. Yet their style is distinctively Southern. His haunting, imagistic lyrics are as steeped in the Southern gothic tradition as anything Barry Hannah or Flannery O’Connor ever committed to print. Flemmons’ voice sounds like every great Southern singer from Doc Boggs to Wayne Coyne, but at the same time nothing like either of them, or anyone else for that matter. He’s thirty-three years old, but sings with all the world-weary crankiness of someone who’s seen at least ninety.
