File Under: Even white boys get the blues
If You Like: Muddy Watters, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Label: Nonesuch
What if two white boys from Akron, Ohio were the best blues band on the planet?
My dad was a big blues fan. I grew up listening to some of the greats of the Mississippi blues: John Lee Hooker, Muddy Watters, Little Walter, Willie Dixon... ya know... the greats. I spent too much time in college at a blues bar with an open mic night in which Louisiana bluesmen would come and jam while I drank beer sold from a cooler. Good times, really. So I'm inclined to like blues bands. Especially anyone who reminds me of Howlin' Wolf, who had the rough voice and immediate style. It was like a plea for help. Which is how I found the Black Keys, a blues-rock duo who are channelling their inner Wolf.
The duo released an EP this year, Chulahoma, a heartfelt tribute to Junior Kimbrough. Kimbrough was a Mississippi bluesman who didn’t land a record deal until 1992 at age 63. He would die of a heart attack in 1998, leaving behind a scant record for one of the men credited as the fathers of rockabilly. The Black Keys tribute album of six cover songs is just honest blues, and may be the best album you could buy this year even if it is so painfully short.
So getting a full length release from them was a nice surprise. The band is stripped down to its very core: the band only has two members and two instruments (guitar and drums) and no overdubs. In an era where everything is done by machine, here are two guys who are so spartan, so immediate, so defiantly analog. It sounds like the way the blues should sound: vulgar and desperate. Even if it is made by two white boys from Akron.
2 comments:
nice...good stuff; love the vocals and the main riff is catchy; only problem is that it might be a "touch" repetitive.
Yeah, blues songs aren't known for their complex lyrics. Repitition kind of comes with the territory. Then again, most of the songs tap out at 3 minutes.
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