Now here’s an oddity. A former metal band that now creates…authentic blues albums! Yep, this is a weird one and all the better for it. Why, there’s even some silliness on a ZZ Top scale. So for all the eulogising over the new Black Stone Cherry album (and it will feature in many people’s top tens I’m sure – and deservedly so) I must admit to being an old sap and preferring this offering from Clutch.  

Both albums are retro southern rock but otherwise a million miles apart. This sounds like it was recorded in Captain Beefheart’s old shack. You can almost smell the old egg boxes glued to the studio wall as vocalist Neil Fallon tells us ‘You Can’t Stop Progress’. Kind of ironic when you consider this sounds like it was mixed in the middle of a Florida swamp on a four-track cassette. Muddy ain’t in it. However it was produced (and mixed) by Joe Barresi of Queens of the Stone Age fame – which I suppose explains a lot.  

Once you get beyond the initial lo-fi sound of ‘From Beale Street To Oblivion’ the whole thing opens up into a joyful combo that sounds like a cross between Danko Jones and The Kings of Leon…as weird as that might seem. Add a bit of Skynryd in there, plus some ZZ Top and you have got an album of surprising charm. Not a word usually found in the annals of Hardrockhouse but true non the same.

‘Power Player’ could be Danko Jones does southern rock and ‘Electric Worry’ is straight from the Mississippi Delta. The guitar riffs supplied from Tim Sult are wonderfully simplistic. A real pleasure on the earlobes yet still quirky enough for the ZZ comparison to apply. ‘When Vegans Attack’ is a wonderfully bizarre title and could have come from Billy Gibbons himself. As could the riff.

‘Mr Shiny Cadillackness’ ends things with a cool sounding Hammond Organ and a song so pimpy it makes the Fun Loving Criminals sound like Noel Edmunds. I love this album but clearly those of a more hard rocking persuasion will probably think it a joke. Which would be a shame as this deserves to be heard on a wider scale such is the infectiousness of the material

If you like quirky southern boogie (albeit from a band that hails from Maryland) and early ZZ Top production values then this is the album for you. A potential cult album.

Let us know your views on From Beale Street To Oblivion

Track Listing

You Can't Stop Progress
Power Player
Devil & Me
White's Ferry
Child of the City
Electric Worry
One Eye $
Rapture of Riddley Walker
When Vegans Attack
Opossum Minister
Black Umbrella
Mr. Shiny Cadillackness

Line Up

Neil Fallon – Vocals/Guitar
Tim Sult – Guitar
Dan Maines – Bass
Jean-Paul Gaster – Drums
Mick Schauer – Organ