Stonking Beauty
At times stonking, at others quite beautiful. At the former
end, penultimate track Foreign Policy
Blues is a stomper, with great slide and thumping drums/bass. This is
followed by closing track Words Are
Coming To An End which is a gentle acoustic number. Pretty enough, but for ‘beautiful’
I am thinking of the a cappella songs like Hall Johnson’s gospel gem Take My Mother Home, given such an
emotive rendition here, and Stan Roger’s Northwest
Passage where the gravel and gravitas in Bill Homan’s verbal lilt gives
this folk tale such a sense of history, though it is relatively contemporary
having been released originally in 1981.
The album opens with harmonica on fire in Tomorrow Night, followed by Slim’s slide
on Bull Goose Rooster and the vocal
reminding of Beefheart, then it’s a wonderful
piano blues Over The Horizon and the
Slim/Homan vocal more in Wait’s late-nite barroom mode, and then fourth is a
gutsy version of Woody Guthrie’s Vigilante
Man, more cool slide on offer. Homan harmonica returns wonderfully on a chugging
James Moore I’m A King Bee version as
track six. I could go through each and every excellent number, but I’m going to
stop now and just listen, it’s that much fun.
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