Year One

About

Jon Spencer has spent his career caught in the middle of the argument over whether his music is a tribute or a mockery of the music he loves. Yet it should be obvious to anyone listening carefully that it’s not a matter of what he loves or mocks, but how successful he is at finding the emotional power in the music after he’s stripped it down to its barest essentials. His previous band, Pussy Galore, was a glorious, deliberately offensive mess designed to “deconstruct” rock n’ roll. The JSBE became his attempt to put the music back together. The guitars and beats that clang together in “History of Sex” are visceral. No nice bass guitar lines smooth over the brittle edges. The rest of <i>Year One</i> is similarly abrasive. It’s a compilation of the first three official (and, wink wink, unofficial) releases: <i>The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion</i>, <i>Crypt Style</i> and <i>A Reverse Willie Horton</i> and features over an hour’s worth of rockabilly and blues gone awry. “Rachel,” “Chicken Walk,” “Write a Song,” “Kill a Man” and “Vacuum of Loneliness” twist heart and guitar strings beyond anything typically associated with these genres and create something new in the process.

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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