Buckaroo Blues/Black Barry

AMG Review of Buckaroo Blues/Black Barry

Ted Mills
All Music Guide

The plan to unveil the Cube-E tour bit by bit accounts for the second part of this puzzle, a cassette-only release that contains live versions of the first half of the tour. Buckaroo Blues, a suite of cowboy poetry set to music, was already familiar to the fans, and where that wasn't entirely successful, the group's invocation of Negro spirituals, delta blues, and gospel in Black Barry was right back on track. In fact, it was one of the most invigorating compositions they had created in a long time. The balance between the source and the deconstruction was finely attuned, where neither obscured, only supported, the other. From the cotton pickers moaning and wailing to the frantic, heart-clutching take on "Shortnin' Bread," the group achieves their goal: forcing the listener to re-assess the beginnings of twentieth-century rock & roll. Strange and beautiful.