CD Review: Sour Ops’ Bikers Make Better Lovers (2026)

Decades ago, before corporate radio mergers created a handful of ginormous  broadcast inanities playing homogenized – and creatively neutered – playlists, listening to your local FM radio station was an adventure. I remember sitting in my bedroom during the early-to-mid-‘70s, listening to the local Nashville rock station WKDF-FM every night, where you could hear a wonderful blend of the commercial giants of the time (Zeppelin, Stones, Deep Purple, Sabbath, et al) played alongside lesser-known but incredible artists (Audience, Humble Pie, Osibisa, Mott the Hoople). 

Nashville rockers Sour Ops remind me a lot of those days, with the band’s enthusiastic embrace of the old and new, and their savvy ability to blend the two into something both timely and yet timeless. Bikers Make Better Lovers is the band’s follow-up to 2024’s delightful Evangeline and their fifth album overall (plus the perfectly cromulent five-song EP Tinder Flame), the Sour Ops not-so-quietly building as impressive a catalog of music as any of their Music City contemporaries and, really, any indie rockers across America.

Sour Ops’ Bikers Make Better Lovers

Bikers Make Better Lovers cranks off with the swirling, synthy ‘80s action movie vibe of “Opting Out” before launching into chiming guitars, cascading rhythms, and frontman Price Harrison’s soaring vocals. Harrison’s oblique lyrics are an enigma wrapped in a soundtrack (seems to be about a romance gone sideways), and the song’s melody will get under your skin from the first note. Harrison’s short guitar solo buzzes like an angry beehive but cuts like a thousand stings while the rest of the band pitches a perfectly joyful noise. Even the lofty backing vox, dancing atop shards of guitar and bass, embellish the song in ways beyond nuance.

“Problem Number Next” follows a similar musical blueprint, albeit with more “wall of sound” instrumental density, drums and bass providing a solid rhythmic backdrop atop which Harrison delivers one of his shortest, shocking, Sonny Sharrock-styled solos. The band’s melodic sense is unparalleled, every tune an infectious mix buoyant pop and erudite rock ‘n’ roll in nearly equal measures, and perfectly suited for FM radio airplay (or would be, if radio wasn’t such a wasteland…). The new wavish ‘80s enchantment of “The Power of Right Now” leans towards the British rock of the era, but still incorporates enough U.S. college radio influence to play to both sides of the fence. Harrison’s use of a Theremin on the song results in an abrasive solo that veers hard towards the psychedelic ‘60s.

The semi-anthemic “She’s So Strange” is a big-beat hard rocker with clamorous instrumentation, vocals that shoot out of the dark like a poison arrow, and an overall chaotic soundtrack that would win a switchblade fight with the Jesus & Mary Chain. The romantic kiss-off of “Made of Lies” is made all the more impactful by Steve Ebe’s massive drumbeats and Tony Frost’s foundational bass lines while “Gym Bro” benefits from the song’s overall, free-for-all cacophony, with clashing, crashing instruments vying for position beneath Harrison’s cool vocals.

All That Matters Now

If Bikers Make Better Lovers was pressed on vinyl (kids: another 1970s/’80s reference), side one would have closed with “Made of Lies” and side two opening with the up-tempo “Gym Bro.” That would make the lovely “All That Matters Now” a ‘cool down’ song, and it does so exquisitely, the performance not quite a ballad, but rather a mid-tempo plea accompanied by a hint of backing vocals and the gorgeous weeping pedal steel of maestro Paul Niedhaus. The pop-flecked, enchanting “Be My Secret” is afforded a spry instrumental backdrop, one of Harrison’s more emotional vocal performances, and an overall musical warmth enhanced by Amanda Broadway’s subtle harmony vocals.

The underlying syncopated rhythms of “No Winner Tonight” add a dash of funk to the performance, but mostly they provide a fast rail for the arrangement to jet along, propelling the instrumentation forward in parallel lines (rather than the less symmetrical arrangements of previous songs) while Harrison’s somber vox mimic Andrew Eldritch of Sisters of Mercy without the Goth trappings, or maybe the shambolic strains of Ian Astbury without the semi-metal overkill. Bikers Make Better Lovers closes with “Fake Appeal,” a less melodic but no less powerful performance with what seems to be (at times) double-tracked vocals, over-amped instrumentation, and more of Harrison’s six-string fever dreams. The song is a fine way to close the album and will continue ringing in your ears long after you turn off the amplifier, leave the room, and pour yourself a shot or two...  

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

If previous Sour Ops albums tended to wear the band’s ‘70s-era musical influences on their figurative sleeves (The Stooges, Big Star, Cheap Trick, etc), Bikers Make Better Lovers eschews even their obvious Replacements obsession by making a bolder, brasher, and definitely louder musical statement. Taking no prisoners, the album’s performances teeter on insanity, opening up sonic possibilities seemingly denied earlier efforts. 

Noticeably missing on Bikers is guitarist Mike Harrison, whose absence allows brother Price to channel his avant-garde aspirations through the fretboard like Television’s Richard Lloyd or Living Colour’s Vernon Reid, without all the messy histrionics of shredders like Joe Satriani or Steve Vai. Lightning quick and gone in a flash, Harrison’s guitar solos are just one facet of the band’s expanded and expansive musical palette that make Bikers Make Better Lovers both their most adventuresome and artistically-expressive album to date, as well as their most entertaining. (Feralette Media, released May 29th, 2026)

Buy the album from Bandcamp: Sour Ops’ Bikers Make Better Lovers   

Also on That Devil Music:
Sour Ops’ Family Circuit CD review