The Bonnevilles, with Mudlow - Legends, Edinburgh, 7 March 2024

Lately I’ve been exploring some raunchy sounds and bands. Unadorned stuff. Retro stuff, some of it. The punk road less travelled, a bit. Honest kinda stuff. And when The Bonnevilles get on stage and crack into the plunging rhythm and ringing guitar of ‘Machine Born To Think’, those lines converge to a fiery point.
They fairly thrash away at ‘Good Suits’, smashing Chris McMullan’s clattering drums into scything slide playing and distorted vocals from Andy McGibbon, who channels the tumult in kinetic style. Oh yeah, and I like his emphatic grunt of  - “Wheugh!” - punctuation too.

The Bonnevilles - getting down to business and channelling the tumult

With their white shirts and black ties, top buttons undone and shirt sleeves rolled up above the elbow, they look like a couple of fellas ready to get down to business at a boozy wake, and there is indeed some very Irish to-ing and fro-ing banter between them now and then. But with a hard curfew of 10pm they’re not inclined to waste time.
There’s more to them than just feral punkishness though, as ‘Long Runs The Fox’ demonstrates, with a strong, ear-catching tune driving through the maelstrom of stop-time riffing, swoops of slide guitar, and McGibbon’s hoarse, rat-a-tat vocals.  They throw some different ingredients into the mix with the staccato riff and falsetto vocal of ‘Reflex Liar’, before ‘Dirty Photographs’ manages to bring some soul inflections to their garage rock sensibilities. On songs like these I hear a lot of early Black Keys in their sandpaper-rough blues grooves, which is right up my street whatever their own direct influences may be.
‘My Dark Heart’ is an upbeat, shake, rattle’n’shuffling animal, albeit with a downbeat bridge to add some dynamics.  Then they unveil new song ‘Awaken From Slumber’ – “ripped off Scott H. Biram", McGibbon says.  Biram’s name is only vaguely familiar to me, but given he’s known as an exponent of both punk and outlaw country, it’s maybe not surprising that ‘. . . Slumber’ sounds like nothing so much as a slice of galloping, hurtling Western swing in ragged, punkish garb.  Their take on ‘Parchment Farm’, though, is a pummelling, driven thing that has more in common with the Blue Cheer version than Mose Allison, crashing its way down a rock’n’roll strewn canyon on the way to a coordinated assault of an ending.
McGibbon introduces ‘Panakromatic’ as “Junior Kimbrough meets Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman” – a novel which is indeed, as he says, a bit like purgatory on acid.  Well, the Junior Kimbrough vibe is certainly there in the repetitive, juddering riff – “Wheugh!” – which here gets

Mudlow - groove-digging darkness

extended into a scuzzily insistent groove, en route to the Diddley-esque rhythm of the set closer ‘10’000’, which is infectious enough to have a group of women start dancing.   And who can blame ‘em?  This lean, fighting fit set by The Bonnevilles is just what the doctor ordered.
Brighton trio Mudlow are a very good fit to partner The Bonnevilles on this tour, taking some similar influences and heading off at their own tangent with them.  I arrive just as they're getting going with ‘Flesh And Blood’, which sounds like the moody overture to some Tom Waits jukebox musical, all brushed drums, rumbling bass and pinpricked guitar.  But they pick up the pace a bit on ‘So Long Lee’, whipping it good while guitarist Tobias Tester, seated on his stool, blends picking and strumming in singular, plectrum-free style.
They continue to mix up light and shade throughout their set, from the grinding, gutbucket boogie of ‘Codename Toad’, through ‘Drunken Turkey’ with maraca-infused drumming from Matt Latcham, spiky guitar, and comical turkey gobbling noises, to ‘Lower Than Mud’ with Tester’s growling, cackling vocal over a dirty, lipsmacking groove.
‘Crackling’ is atmospheric and crepuscular over restrained snare drum tapping from Latcham, and ‘Red Ribbon’ is a very Waits-ian sleazy noir tale about getting shot in the stomach.
They finish up with a medley of ‘Further Down The Road’ and ‘Red Rock’, centering on a blisteringly grimy solo from Tester over increasingly animated drums, while poker faced bassist Paul Pascoe gets down and gets with it like an agitated stick insect.  Mudlow are never going to be big stars, but catch ‘em live if you can for a groove-digging, unsettling spin through the darkness on the edge of town.
 
The Bonnevilles and Mudlow continue their Age Of Monsters tour until 17 March, details here.

Mudlow - Bad Turn

Mudlow are a trio.  Not a power trio, mark you.  If what you’re after is butt-shaking blues-rock, with lots of guitar jiggery-pokery and lyrics about lascivious women, then move along buddy.  Mudlow are on a different, more winding road with Bad Turn.

Listen to tracks like the opening ‘Lower Than Mud’ and, later, ‘One Bad Turn’, and you won’t really need to be told that Tom Waits is a big influence.  ‘Lower Than Mud’ has an [Explicit] label slapped on it, which is a laugh, because I can only make out about half of what guitarist and vocalist Tobias Tester is singing, and certainly can’t decipher any four-letter mischief he might be

Mudlow - just your average everyday party animals

Pic by Jonny Wilson

dealing out.  Not that I mind, because his growling, cackling Waitsian sound-over-sense brings a gloriously ragged edge to this dipping, looping, low-key boogie. ‘One Bad Turn’, meanwhile, evokes Waits in more balladeering mode.  It’s a downbeat monologue, like a late night drinker telling his tale to a barkeep who ain’t listening. “One bad turn, outside the house I used to own / Inside the yard’s overgrown, spreading grass and weeds I used to mow,” go the opening lines, setting the tone, against a sparse backdrop of pricking guitar, gently ticking drums, and restrained bass.
The boogie ain’t just any old two-step.  North Mississippi hill country vibes infuse the perky, twitching grooves of ‘Further Down The Road’, while Tester rolls out images like a tour guide rolling down the Main Street of some seedy town in a beat-up Oldsmobile, pointing out “Good ol’ boys getting teenage girls loaded in the local saloon”.  Subdued at first, it gradually gathers momentum, rattling and scraping its way towards a serrated, scratchy solo from Tester.  ‘Red Rock’ gives this hypnotic groove a modern lift, with a rolling, offbeat rhythm from drummer Matt Latcham and rumbling bass from Paul Pascoe laying the foundations for a fuzzy, Stylophone-like stutter of a guitar riff, coming over like the Black Keys, with a jolt of electricity making Tester yowl every time the chorus comes around.
There’s a vaguely Latin air to the skipping rhythm and prickling guitar of ‘The Last Rung Down To Hell’, backing the semi-spoken narration, until they shift into a more urgent gear to relate the final descent into the darkness.  And the following ‘So Long Lee (Redux) is another uptempo affair, scooting along in jagged fashion while Tester lets loose a whooping, yelping vocal.
Along the way both ‘Clean Slate’ and ‘Crocodile Man’ cleave more to brooding, murky atmosphere, the former with meandering guitar lines over similarly roving bass, the latter with a hushed vocal and more twinkling guitar over rolling bass and a tapping rhythm until they up the ante for a twanging, discordant guitar break and closing exclamations of “Lord have mercy on me”.  And the closing ‘Sundown’ is an acoustic-sounding collage of images from the end of a day, a mother “picking up her kid, he’s all fingernails and dirt” and urging him to “get out of this ol’ town”, all anchored by minimalist tripping drums and just enough bass.
Are some of those rippling, circling guitar lines a bit samey?  Maybe.  But Mudlow are really all about drawing you into a mood, a place, a grimy, dust-swept scene, and considering they come from Brighton, the sense of back roads America is pretty convincing.   Bad Turn is an album that fell down the back of the Blues Enthused sofa earlier in the year.  I wish I’d rescued it sooner.
 
Bad Turn is out now on Whisky Preachin’ Records [vinyl] and Juke Joint 500 [CD], and can be ordered here.

Future Juke preview - A Festival of 21st Century Blues

There’s this Future Juke Festival coming up at a handful of venues in London in the next week, in case you hadn’t noticed.  So I thought I’d pitch in with some thoughts on a few of the acts I’ve tripped over previously.  Well why not?

Eli “Paperboy” Reed could well be one of the highlights of the week at the 100 Club on 4 June, judging by the urgent, sometimes gospel-inflected, Sixties-style soul of his 2016 album My Way Home.  If Samantha Fish took Detroit R’n’B mini-epics of love and rejection, and re-tooled them for the 21st century on her album Chills & Fever, Reed’s style is a throwback to the old days, with

Eli "Paperboy" Reed up close and personal

a reverb-drenched production where you can practically hear scratches on 45rpm vinyl.

The energy levels are intense on the likes of ‘Cut Ya Down’, but he also pulls off sweetly Sam Cooke-ish soul on both ‘Tomorrow’s Not Promised’ and the title track, with its gospel choir like backing vocals.  It’s worth bearing in mind that in addition to spending a year or so imbibing the blues in Clarksdale, Bostonian Reed played organ and piano in a Chicago church alongside noted soul singer Mitty Collier, so he knows his onions, and it’s apparent here.

‘The Strangest Thing’ is rock’n’rollin’ testification, while ‘A Few More Days’ has a dash of funk with its cocky guitar riffing.  And throughout it all Reed delivers vocals that are raw and convincing, with controlled melisma – and it’s not all boy/girl, moon/June soul subject matter by the way.

There are people who rave about the soul of our own James Hunter Six, but frankly they’re smooth operaters compared to Reed’s fervent reawakening of the Sixties.

One of the other main events is the outing at Dingwall’s on 1 June by Californian Grammy Award winner Fantastic Negrito, and you can find a review of his upcoming third record Please Don’t Be Dead here – with links to coverage of his two previous efforts.  But he’s also supported by British trio Miraculous Mule, so what are they all about?

Well, I’m not yet acquainted with their latest album Two Tonne Testimony.  But back in 2015 I came across their back-to-basics reading of ‘In My Time Of Dying’ on a covermount tribute CD to Physical Graffiti produced by Mojo magazine. On the strength of that I got hold of a couple of their albums, Blues Uzi and Deep Fried, which showed them offering a few different modes of

Miraculous Mule get spiritual

bluesiness.

First and foremost perhaps, they have a penchant for traditional spirituals and folk songs of the kind you might expect from Blind Boys Of Alabama, but often with a British sensibility that’s sometimes modern and edgy, sometimes dead straight. So they do a delightful version of ‘Wayfaring Stranger’ that sounds like it’s straight out of the British Blues Boom by someone like The Animals.

Or there’s their minimalist take on the 19th century hymn ‘I Know I’ve Been Changed’ – also recorded by Aaron Neville – where the lead vocal is backed by little more than low key guitar and choral backing voices, with sporadic handclaps – a template they exploit more than a little.  But they might also produce something like ‘Satisfied’, with its guitar buzzing like a jarful of wasps behind the favoured device of a hypnotically repetitive, work song-like vocal refrain.

Then again, stuff like ‘Highway Song’ offers a blissed-out wah-wah trip that’s all Swinging Sixties London, whether in the hands of envelope-pushing Brits or Hendrix, who’s also echoed in the ‘Crosstown Traffic’ style riffing they bring to the gospel of ‘I’m A Soldier’ (aka 'Soldier For Jesus', a song often played to great effect by electric blues icon Joe Louis Walker). Or in another vein altogether you might get some country blues with clanking percussion a la Lincoln Durham, as on ‘Blues Uzi’.

On 31 May Brighton’s Mudlow are part of a three-part bill at The Islington. Their retrospective collection Waiting For The Tide To Rise opens with the well gutsy ‘Down In The Snow’, which features a guttural, ‘Peter Gunn’ style riff accompanied by swelling horns, gruff barked vocals and a down-in-the-dirt guitar solo from Tobias Tester, plus a tasteful trumpet break,  But for the

most part it's a three-piece affair, with a few interjections of harp and horns.

Sometimes this means down to earth grunginess on the likes of ‘Drunken Turkey’, with the howling vocals sounding like a herniated Screaming Jay Hawkins, or a North Mississippi vibe on ‘So Long Lee’ with its rolling guitar line.  Often it's dark, contemplative Americana, maybe haunting as on ‘The Jester’ with its twanging, spaced out guitar notes and tickled piano. Some of this, to be honest, can start to seem a bit earnest and sombre, though Tester does turn his hand to a good Tom Waits-like vocal along the way.

Personally I like them best on the likes of ‘Stubb’s Yard’, which has a jaunty Delta simplicity to it that’s redolent of Frank Frost and Sam Carr.  Or on ‘Codename: Toad’, which has an air of Feelgood but more primitive – although they take their foot off the pedal a bit, rather than ramming it home in the way Wilko, Lee and co would have done.  Hopefully they’ll give stuff like this a bit more welly live.

But what do I know? There are other acts out there during Future Juke, billed as a Festival of 21st Century blues.  Go see, go hear!