Sugar Brown - Poor Lazarus - New release review

I just received the newest release, Poor Lazarus from Sugar Brown and I quite like it! Opening with rocker Walkin' With Frankie, a Frankie Lee Sims track, it has a certain crude construction quality that I find particularly cool. Sugar Brown leads on guitar and vocal, joined by Joolyah Narveson on rhythm guitar and sax, and Art Maky on drums. Meet Me In The Country is a great delta style blues track with an authentic guitar riff throughout. Growing to a loud jangle this track keeps it's backwoods sound and primitive sound. Very nice! Boogie track, What A Comrade Left Behind has a Hound Dog Taylor feel with just a minor pinch of C&W styling. Love the loose guitar soloing by Brown. Tom Waits track, Get Behind The Mule has a RL Burnside rockin blues sound with real intensity, joined on this track by Pat Phillips on drums and Tyler Stoddart on maracas. Brown has a cool voice and gets a cool guitar groove going. On RL Burnside's Goin' Down South Narveson switches over to upright bass and Art Maky plays drums following Brown in a chant like blues track. Poor Lazarus is a real cool remake of a traditional track about the shooting of a black man at the hands of a vengeful sheriff, with a heavy Doors like blues feel and descending bass work from Narveson. Bharath Rajakumar joins on chromatic harp. Very cool track! Instrumental, Blue Lights Hooker is possibly my favorite track on the release with a traditional Chicago styling...nice and slow. Rajakumar lays it down heavy on chromatic harp and with predominantly only a bass line played under the melody and joined by Phillips on vibes. Tokyo Nagaremono is an unusual track in that it is a theme song from a Japanese film , Tokyo Drifter. This track doesn't have a blues construction but it is in fact a very cool eerie ballad. Train Sixty-Four feels like a Morganfield track with a deep delta root. Written in fact by Brown, it features raw vocals by Brown, a simple guitar track and is supplemented by Rajakumar on harp, Narveson on upright, Maky on drums and Phillips on percussion. With a Johnny Otis/R&B/Bo Diddley fusion, Brown takes a Lewis Carroll poem, The Mad Gardener's Song: Part 1 and makes it into a contagious rocker. Cool! Burn It Down visits the Jimmy Reed blues book with a great driving blues rhythm, solid vocals and screaming harp. Very nice! The Mad Gardener's Song: Part 2 gets an eastern twist but still over a basic stripped down blues rocker grinds out a real cool track. With a twist on Willie Dixon, Brown comes up with Not Your Backdoor Man. Staying with that Mississippi Hill style, Brown gets a solid groove and certainly understands how to deliver the vocals. His raw, fat, jangly guitar work rides nicely on top of a solid bed of rhythm by Narveson, Maky, Phillips. Wrapping the release is Willie Dixon's Weak Brain and Narrow Mind but with a very solitude interpretation. This track is a real surprise on the release, very understated but powerful. This is a real strong release that packs a punch!

   

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