AMG Review of Something Borrowed Something

Jack Rabid
All Music Guide

With his eighth solo LP, Something Borrowed Something, Virginia's Blue is getting at his (and our) gin-joint roots. Bearing no relation to the goth/prog strains of his last work -- the precarious, painful concept LP, 2000's Holly's Song -- the experimental, fiercely independent artist now has a jones for prickly blues-rock, and launches himself into it with the same fervent obsession. That his cover of "Hound Dog" (all the rest are originals) is in the vein of Big Mama Thornton's more groovy, put-upon original -- not the better-known, suped-up rockabilly/Elvis Presley hit cover -- is only the starter's hint. The riffs come straight out of the glorious catalog fermented by the African-American artists whom Sam Phillips brought in to his Sun Studios -- B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Rufus Thomas, Jr., and Joe Hill Louis -- before he hit commercial riches with Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Roy Orbison. But Blue sings with a psychotic, swamp bogeyman demeanor that is more reminiscent of the young Lux Interior of the Cramps, and his strutting guitar playing is more from the harsh Louisiana-by-way-of-Texas strain of the form. Stevie Ray Vaughan never recorded a song as mean and low-down as "My Drinkin' (Has Saved Your Life)," but Buddy Guy sure has. And when Blue sings, in his Jim Morrison/Screamin' Jay Hawkins low, tough, growl-voice, "My money's always gone when I get it/And that's if I get it at all" on "Fistful of Bartabs," he sure sounds like the song's dive-bar down-and-outer spending every last plug nickel he has yet to actually earn seeking the Mezcal worm. And doesn't that sound like John Lee Hooker playing lead on "Mi Mujer"? If you want some voodoo in your Bayou boogie, and you don't want it nice and polite, come eat this thick and demented gumbo.