Howlin' Wolf

Ticklish with anxious energy, as if the mob is on your back - a crazy fool named Howlin' wolf makes his way through this album. He pretends to have a cool in the lyrics but the tremble in his greasy voice and the riffs constantly remind us that this album is in a nervous hurry. It's that fast paced blues that feels as old and fresh of that made in the 1930s. It has the gritty spark of the purest of roasted blues, like the rockiness of Elmore James but the gritty uncleanness that is only found in the most southern of rumskate bars. It's a fantastic evocation of the spittin image of what the genre should look and sound like.

It has the most uniques of voices, a man who could be born two hundred years ago and drinks a jar of oil to train his throat. He's a man with a coarse, throaty voice that aims to please as a human version of the devil himself. The sometimes joyous, sometimes melancholic swing is rocky and tumblin' and layered on top of a layer of sharp sounding guitar that is plucked instead of played and a piano that doesn't do the carelessness of most saloon piano's justice. The background noise that proves to be quite low quality recording does all but harm the very particular producing. It is anxious at many times and a bit cheap but it so focused and even intimate in it's moody and cynical complaining in the coat of a rural outhouse. To put it in short: it's as hard boiled as they come, bleeding around the edges and rock solid in the core. It is jumpy and dancy in a very rudimentary fashion but doesn't suggest joy as much as it does as a plain outlet. It's very likeable in an empathic fashion that could be played during a chaotic drunken evening. Howlin Wolf, the album, reeks of cheap liquor and deep passion at the same time.
The whole thing that ties this album together is of course the Howlin Wolf himself, who does indeed scream his lungs out in that delicious drawl with an accent that is meticulous on his letters. The last letters of the words he sings often vanish into thin air rather than exist, the sounds of "Ch" in chicken for example then, is more than very prominent. It is the kind of voice that would break if he betrayed this accent or tried to thread into the zone of sentimentality. He does have a mighty enjoyable aura like a mystical charmer full of wisdom. Vocals be harder and more rigid than a floor of gravel, but it's the whole Schtick and it's very much appreciated how funny it is. His lyrics are punchy and cynical, like an old man whose been poor all his life and has shaken it off. Back Door Man is on it's surface less innocent than it sounds - it's very naughty actually. They're an attitude he conveys, not stories - and that's what it's all about. The songs are in one key and can sting more than they roll if you're not in the mood or style to listen to this album but I can't really complain about that. Some songs miss punchlines or that peak that other songs do have - they're at best when they go from very high to low intensity instead of three minutes of saloony dance music, which dominates some songs. All by all, they stay compelling and within the same train of thought. At least the album ends with a banger - Spoonful. That's the peak one I was waiting for the whole album.