On Goodbye Cruel World, Hello Crueler World, North Carolina natives Spider Bags work once again with legendary engineer Brian Paulson. Picking themselves up from the drunken wranglings of last year's A Celebration of Hunger, the band kicks off with the upbeat "It Always Loved to Happen," full of open-road energy and memories. "Quevivaelrocanroll" is the next step in their evolution: a drawn-back, anthemic barn-burner with sweat rolling through the speakers. The listener can picture frontman Dan McGee leading the way, with a guitar in one hand and drink in the other, marching through the old town square on an impromptu parade at midnight in the middle of July. 
"... Spider Bags are ostensibly Americana, but it's the kind of reeling-in-sickness music you'd expect from Neil Young, Gram Parsons, Meat Puppets.... Every song... finds beauty in pain and darkness, with lyrics ("She's got a crooked face when she smiles") that are as thoughtful as the music behind them. I'm gonna go so far as to call [A Celebration of Hunger] brilliant. That's right, brilliant. There's not a bad track on the entire record, and it's a goddamn shame I didn't hear about this album when it came out, because it easily would have made my top ten for the year." 
--Berkeley Place Blog  
"... these scraggly Chapel Hill punks go face down in a glass of Wild Turkey and survive to testify." 
--SPIN 
"The Spider Bags locate their identity by running that particular current of electricity through country music's liquor-soaked puddle of self-loathing and reveling in it." 
--Dusted 
"Every once in a while, a band like Chapel Hill's Spider Bags will debut with a record so good it makes me realize I've been way too generous with everyone else. A Celebration of Hunger... is just the sort of thing I should be holding my hosannas for: a filler-free collection of openhearted, empty-bottled country rock fueled by bitterness and scalding wit." 
--Monica Kendrick, Chicago Reader