Time: 45:46
File: Flac
Released: 2020
Styles: Blues, blues-rock, stompin' blues
Art: Front, tray
1. Tea And Sugar Train (3:51)
2. Dog In The Fight (3:29)
3. Bad Recruit (3:31)
4. Mass Destruction (5:32)
5. Big Dreams And Open Country (4:49)
6. Pass For Jesus (4:13)
7. Obake (The Ghost) (3:47)
8. No Know-How (3:42)
9. Tombstoning (2:55)
10. John Prine (3:22)
11. You Don't Love Me (3:06)
12. Shake Em On Down (3:25)
As we approach the tail-end of this Foul Year of our Lord, 2020, perhaps the most pertinent genre with which to encapsulate it all is the blues: wailing, thumping, visceral and raw, the near perfect reaction to a year which has upended all we know, think and feel. And yet – and perhaps more importantly – in the hands of the likes of seminal Australian group Backsliders, there is also a sense of hope to this music, and a powerful desire to win. Led in equal part by Dom Turner’s guitar experimentation and Rob Hirst’s ingenious rhythmic musings, along with harmonica players Joe Glover and Ian Collard, the band’s 15th record really throbs, and then, with raucous positivity comes this: “It was a year the clock stopped”, Turner sings on John Prine, before intoning, “People kept their hopes up.” This is indeed an album for hard times, but one which shoves adversity to the side in order to let it all out. There’s a real Jon Spencer Blues Explosion feel to parts of the record: muscular and rock’n’rollish, and in the hands of these vets the blues element isn’t staid, but is led down different, swampy paths to create something new and, indeed, hopeful. Bone crunching stuff.
Bonecrunch FLAC