C'mon Detroit, 'cuz the blues is still #1, now! Damage! Damage! Damage!-Jon Spencer, "Damage"
Slather in sanctimonious spazz-screeds, no I will not hold-back, yes I am still rattled from the live show these three men performed in Pontiac just about two years ago, rattled, folks...
Those thunder-claps are right over your head, right on top of you, on your shoulders, elbowing your ribs and, a shunted knee right into your spine, time to get-up...
This is the kind of band that brings their bruising ballet of avalanche-groove and strikes guilt in me for ever employing cliches of: forcefulness, grit, swagger or just pure tilt-o-whirl destructo-dazzle style onto any other band's works, rock, blues or noise-noodler... This is the band. Back now, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, freight-training-their way into their fourth decade...after eight years of somewhat dormancy/regrouping/re-assignments towards other musical projects: Jon Spencer / Judah Bauer / Russell Simms, reconvene, go provide a knuckley-full-extension punch of frankness to this puddly-faced "mediocrity" of 2012...
"Too much mediocrity!" sings Spencer "Bag of Bones," from Meat and Bone (Boombox/Mom+Pop!) “Aaaaaw, you gotta try a little bit harder, yeah, to get the beef on it,..."
That cathartic huffed grunt before the hook cuts in and the bass barrel-rolls is unavoidable, the break-beat style filling through the mellow bridges intimidate as much as they entrance, that snarling-panache of your fiery crooner and the elusive funk-riffs tearing at the foundations of the song - the bass radiating floorboards - the drums shattering shards of every window in the house and the heavy-howl carrying out onto the street...
JSBX - Magic Stick - Detroit - Friday - 10.19.12
Listen: "Black Mold"-- Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Dig this music video (via Pitchfork) featuring a horror/sci-fi blender of Evil Dead-by-way-of-David Lynch-by-way-of-David Cronenberg-by-way-of-seminal 50's-monster-haunts...
