Blues Explosion - 'Damage' (Mute)
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
The Catholics, The Jicks, er... The Bunnymen (ok, so we ran out), listen up! Step into the limelight, claim your dues! Take a leaf out of the book of Jon Spencer, as he still has a name, but for the first time, he's chosen to become part of his own backing-band.
Subsequently, they're better than ever, and Spencer knows it - the opening holler of the title-track says as much - 'Can you dig my band?!' It's not easy to do otherwise.
They're ranting on about it being the greatest album of their career, and whilst it's far from the perfect record (the grooves and riffs, whilst full of both chunk and funk, are nothing particularly ground-breaking), it fulfils that boast. Whilst they were always impeccable blues musicians with punk tendencies (still a lot of this sounds like Elvis fronting X-Ray Specs), some of that prior grit has been supplemented with a new found ability to write proper, interesting songs. It's their most polished record, but thankfully only the earnestness of the performance here is over the top.
At its best, things like 'Burn It Off' don't so much swagger themselves as induce a swagger in the listener - and, as such, any typographical errors in the resulting paragraphs will result from trying to compensate the conflicting desires to dance to the record and urge other people to buy it and do the same; nothing to do with a deficient grasp of the English language. Honestly.
But there are pieces here with almost a Motown ambience to them - 'Spoiled' and 'You Been My Baby' to name but two - the first bearing a not-totally-unfounded Supremes feel to it, if Spencer didn't come across like one hell of a sleazy bastard. For once, a Jon Spencer Blues Explosion record, sorry, a Blues Explosion record (surely you lot must be finding that a difficult one to get used to as well?) is difficult to figure out.
As if to emphasise the point, up pops Chuck D and a protest song about war. 'If they want my vote they got to try a little bit more harder.' relates Jon, eloquently. Why it works is anyone's guess, but we reckon it's that perverse background jam and not the all too matter-of-fact lyrics that mean they pull it off. The off-the-cuff attitude to wording is one of the few things unaltered from previous incarnations of the Explosion. Of course, a lot of it is made up on the spot. You couldn't exactly imagine a pensive Spencer sitting at a table after completing another thick, bluesy jam (check 'Crunchy'; its title doth not lie), scanning the depths of his mind, contemplating what would provoke thought in the listener and coming up with 'I got the blues SO bad,' but that kind of thing impulsively litters the record. To be fair, you understand the feeling contained therein a lot better for it. How are they feeling? Well, they've got the blues. How much have they got the blues? They've got the blues SO bad. Not that difficult to comprehend.
No pretence whatsoever. If they're happy, you'll know it, because the joy will transcend the space between the speakers and your brain and affect you accordingly. If they want to chill for a bit ('Rattling', for example), you'll be thankful of the rest. And if they want to get a little sordid ('Mars Arizona' - 'I'm gonna put my stink over your stink...'), God help you if you don't feel a little bit more suggestible. Maybe they don't want to party all the time. But it seems, happily for us, they just can't help themselves.
Artists in this article: Blues Explosion
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