Album Review – The Darryl’s – “How It’s Done”

Underground Country (#590) and Comedic Country (#578.5) on the Country DDS.

If “mullet” was a musical genre, The Darryl’s would be the kings of it. With music like this out there, no catalytic converter is safe. How would one begin to describe the audio emanations of The Darryl’s? It’s like the noise that oozes from an incestuous singlewide the day after the scammed Social Security disability checks clear, and the pills get crushed on jewel cases of Loverboy’s Greatest Hits to go straight up the nose to fuel all night ragers keeping the whole damn holler awake.

What “genre” would you catalog The Darryl’s under? “Country,” I guess, if it was corroded by leaking meth lab ingredients, or left to marinate in the methane smell from a condemned septic tank. If you’re worried Child Protective Services is finally going to come and collect the kiddos to go live with Aunt Claudette, you might not want to have a copy of How It’s Done by The Darryl’s in your household as incriminating evidence.

There’s a whole song on this album about stealing copper. There’s another that just sounds like some dude reciting a Yelp review of a local bar authored by a single mother. The song “Honkin In The Driveway” feels like the prelude to a domestic violence case. “Like At” makes strong use of the lowest forms of the English language—just a level above audible grunts. This music smells like offensive pheremonal projections mixed with drug store cologne and gas station stimulants with the selling point of “legal.”

But if you’re reading these proclamations and concluding this Darryl’s album is rant-worthy rubbish only worth for the inadvertent comedic value or the car crash rubberneck factor, you’ve got it all wrong. Everything might be wrong about what The Darryl’s are throwing down here. But that’s what makes it so right. The Darryl’s are the exact kind of goofball country music bullshit that we need right here, right now.

How It’s Done is devilishly entertaining, and it happens to take a lot of cultural insight and subversive mind space to come up with music this seedy, yet scathingly true to life. In short, it’s genius.

Who exactly are The Darryl’s? They go under “Darryl” aliases, and they dressed up in costumes for their album release show at the legendary White Horse in Austin on Saturday night (10-31) coinciding with Halloween, shrouding their true identities. Incidentally they also played a debut show at Hotel Vegas in Austin on January 4th, 2025.

After some simple research on the dirty internet though, Saving Country Music has determined the band consists of Austin music mainstay Jonathan Terrell (Lucky Dog Darryl), mustachioed country music iconoclast Dylan Earl (Durl Darryl), bass player Cameron Duddy from the band Midland (Shurl Darryl), and Midland guitarist Luke Cutcheon (Thibodeaux “Beans” Darryl). Engineer/producer Pat Manske plays drums as well.

Don’t think of some Wheeler Walker Jr. gimmick going on here. The Darryl’s aren’t looking to entertain you through shock value or caricaturist portrayals of Redneck America that could also be read as offensive snobbishness. The genius is in how The Darryl’s make music that feels both silly yet scathingly true, while at the same time forwarding a subtle cultural insight underneath. Though this entire exercise may to come across as stupid and superfulous, it’s really smart and clever in how it all unfolds.

At the same time, over-intellectualizing this stuff or trying to forward it as some sort of striking social commentary or political protest music is to risk rendering it incredibly uncool. The Darryl’s are The Darryl’s. They’re doing this because it’s wickedly entertaining, and in a way that touches musical erogenous zones inaccessible by conventional approaches to country.

Could an album this dumb end up as one of the most entertaining all year? Less than a week ago, only a handful of people even knew who The Darryl’s were. Now, they’ve put on one of the most creatively daring records of 2026. By just trying to be silly and wanting to entertain themselves first, The Darryl’s have stumbled onto country music gold.

8.5/10

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