Blues Explosion - Damage

Wed 17th Nov, 2004 in Music Reviews

Remember Jon Spencer? The guy who – along with being one of the finest purveyors of funky-arsed dirty groove a-la Soledad Bros or James Brown – regularly ran amok at shows, jumping into crowds on TV appearances, and was generally regarded as being perfectly poured into his tight trousers? Well, he – and his two sidemen – is back. Only this time, there’s a little shift in the world of the Blues Explosion. For a start, they’re no longer Jon Spencer’s; now, the trio’s only known as Blues Explosion. Why did the name change? Good question. It could be that Judah Bauer and Russell Simins got fed up with being known as the two blokes behind the guy with the killer sideburns. More likely, though, is Spencer’s own answer that it just “felt right”; the band has, in his eyes, always been a band – not just eye-candy with killer backup.

Damage, their first album in two years, is the results of weeks of intensive recording and jamming in Simins’ studio, and features a plethora of producers (including Dan The Automator, Alan Moulder and DJ Shadow) whose deftness at the mixing board helped whittle down about four albums’ worth of tunes into one. And though it’s a sampler of sorts, it’s also a lot stronger than some other albums in their back-catalogue. Production is great – given the names involved, that’s hardly surprising – but it also rocks harder than their recent discs, an achievement that’s pretty impressive, given this album’s forays into uncharted territory.

The album opener and title track, Damage kicks things off with one of the slower numbers in the band’s canon – wailing feedback and echoed vocals, before enormous drums kick in over the top of Spencer asking

Can you dig my band?

It’s more of a statement of defiance than a question. The singer’s Lux Interior growl comes out, and it’s within the song that we get a reminder – as if Spencer’d let you forget – that the blues are still number one! Later on, highly processed drums breakbeat over the top of the song, which then morphs into a sort of Aphex TwinmeetsGene Krupa ending. It’s an opening that gives listeners reason to be on edge, making it known that this isn’t the JSBX of old. It’s something a lot leaner and meaner, as harried and edgy as the disc artwork’s musicians pictured hiding out in a hotel suggest. There’s something afoot here that hasn’t been seen on former Blues Explosion discs, and while it’s hard to pinpoint, its presence is felt throughout the length of Damage.

Of course, Burn It Off follows straight on, and serves as an excellent reminder that the intervening quietude for the band since their last album, Plastic Fang, hasn’t turned down their sass or their volume. If anything, it’s increased. Mars, Arizona’s sci-fi overtones mimic the mic-in-mouth histrionics of The Cramps (but with a massively fuzzy bottom end, which somehow fits the lyric

I’m gonna put my stink all over your stink!

perfectly.) while Rivals is a much more restrained affair, tightly-constrained with occasional bursts of soul horn, and acid-spill wah guitar that evokes a grandeur that former albums had only hinted at the band having possession of. Help These Blues is a typical party-starter that’s more assured than almost anything else on the album, and it’s all about testifying about the St Vitus’ dance that is the creation of music:

sings Spencer, his livewire energy undiminished.

Of course, not all proceeds as you’d expect. Spoiled contains a dreaminess that sounds a lot like a souped-up Brian Jonestown Massacre, fronted by Elvis. Chords ring out, and – shock, horror! – acoustic guitars are strummed with fervour. The layered works of track producer David Holmes are well in evidence here. Elsewhere, the band extends themselves with You Been My Baby, a slow, sultry number that’s full of pleading and bluesman suffering… assuming that you were receiving it from somewhere deep in space. Crunchy sounds like a Rolling Stones track, with electric piano and good-time groove. The illusion is only shattered by the increasingly funky breakdown moment about two-and-a-half minutes through, which ends with what sounds like a rather creaky cupboard door opening over the back of the music.

Is this the way it’s supposed to be?
Have you had enough of this misery?
I can comfort you, come on honey.

he calls over the top of the party. Some things about this band never change, reassuringly.

Where things do change, however, the difference is marked. Hot Gossip sees Spencer adopting his best lover man tone in a song that takes war to task. Wars on democracy and freedom, in particular. Sound familiar? The complaints are particularly germane to our recent round of depressing electoral results:

Anti-government sentiment, theremin and guest vocals from Chuck D of Public Enemy, coupled with a dirty riff that’ll see arses shaking across the nation – why isn’t more stuff released like this? Activism’s never been so… groovy. It’s heartening to see a band of such long standing stand up, be counted, and challenge themselves with tracks like this – that is, in essence, what Damage is all about.

Damage is the disc that sees the Blues Explosion shuck off not only the name of its lead singer and guitarist, but also some of its getting-tired clichés. There’s still the inevitable shout-out, and the album occasionally sounds a hell of a lot like everything else in their catalogue – note to band: more songs about afros, please – but there’s more of a sense of musical investigation present here. The band’s always been a live beast, and most of their albums have been – while eminently listenable – failures in their attempts to capture the sweat-and-soul-on-red-cordial feel of the typical Blues Explosion hot night in a small venue, and Damage isn’t much difference in that regard: it doesn’t (regardless of how funky it gets) crackle with quite as much sex as their live show does. But what the album does well is to create a portrait a band that’s ready to go the next step. Beats and fucking with tunes – and not just in a break-it-on-down-now kind of way – are more prevalent here, and indicate that the group’s forging ahead into territories that aren’t that familiar to them, even if they have toyed with remixes in a pretty meaningful way before. And for my money, I’d rather hear a group on a quest, than one peddling the sort of played-out stuff that’s easy for them to play. These guys are superlative musicians in the swampy-evil sense of the word – when Spencer grunts as guitar-lines merge, it sounds purely as if he’s feeling the music, rather than some kind of hipster put-on – but it’s even better to hear them going a little further out on a limb, even if the results are sometimes uneven. Evenness, after all, hasn’t been something this trio’s ever cared for. Instead, Damage works as a fascinating record of a band taking suck-it-and-see risks with different producers and musical feels. 

As a result, it’s one of the more interesting Blues Explosion (Spencer’s surname attached or not) albums in quite a while. Here’s hoping it continues.