Ruf (label)
01 July 2016 (released)
04 July 2016
This is one heck of an album. Rollicking Blues and rock and covering so many forms, it put a huge smile on my face from first listen and subsequent runs through have only confirmed that this is an album anyone into Blues should love.
The opening number ‘How Do You Feel’ has a wonderful groove and punch, kicking off like The Rolling Stones around the ‘Exile’era and then segueing into a Grateful Dead-esque harmony. Simply superb but not the highest point of a terrific album.
There is funk here too. Second track ‘Head High Water Blues’ is a paean to that terrible day when Katrina destroyed their home town of New Orleans but done with hard groove and stunning guitar from Chris Mule.
All over the album you can hear the traces of four musicians who have been together for 10 years, knew each other before the catastrophe and played thousands of gigs before rolling up to record this – their fourth – album.
That it is produced by Luther Dickinson only adds to the quality and one of the things he brought was the intensity of recording the album in an incredibly tight time and with minimal ‘trickery’ – it is all a window on to the souls of the band and their songwriting skills.
If I hear a better album this year I will be very, very happy but in the meantime I’m just settling into the groove and slide of ‘Ain’t No Easy Way’ and the swamp Blues that is ‘Through Another Day, redolent of the humid and fetid air of the
Bayou.
Album closer ‘Devil’s Den’ takes you into the Appalachian territories adding mandolin to a fine slide Blues and just leading you back to cueing up ‘How Do You Feel’ yet again.
