STEREO REVIEW, October 1998
 
With the V-roys, you've got to expect the unexpected; roots rock, laced with either distorted or crystal-clear guitar, rubbing up against bluegrass where banjo, mandolin, and fiddle vie for time, in songs to girls worshipped, lusted after, or reviled, wrapped in '60s-style chord progressions -- and all topped off with the country rock sensibilities of producers Ray Kennedy and Steve Earle. It's a smorgasbord with a killer backbeat. Sometimes all in one song.
 
On All About Town, the Knoxville-based V-roys reprise the prodigious eclecticism of their 1996 debut record, Just Add Ice, veering from the Dirt Band redux of "Mary" and the college-boy excitement of "Amy 88" to the prideful Irish romp of "Over the Mountain". Aside from the emotional vibrancy (and the universal appeal of the Everyman vocals), what stands out is the band's cornucopia of sounds: a buzzing saw of an electric guitar, a sneering snare, an angry bass. For all the simplicity of its subject matter, the music here is as complex as good pop music gets. In their close-cut suits and ties, the V-roys may looke like frat boys, but they play like mothers.
 

-Alana Nash