Blackberry Smoke
Leave a Scar

These "Blackberry Smoke" (!) are the musical reality that currently enjoys my greatest attention, in the sense of frequent, in-depth, and passionate listening. They are a quintet from Atlanta playing classic southern rock that is very composed and devoid of any excess, whether it be soloistic, noisy, or lyrical. Their taste is decidedly oriented towards compact songs that describe simple everyday stories… there's no instrumental animosity or individualism, the musicians are constantly projected towards a sonic amalgam and community that doesn't involve any prima donnas stepping to the forefront for more than eight bars, oddities or experiments. The result is as vintage as it gets, in the best and most positive sense of the term… the effect is similar to driving a Gran Torino after years of SUVs, crossovers or economy cars, like eating cappelletti at Christmas at grandma's after months of Barilla pasta or pretentious restaurants, like watching Claudia Cardinale in a seventies cinemascope film with watercolor tones after the endless winks of modern plumped-up beauties of current/virtual cinema.

“Leave a Scar” is leaving anything but an ugly mark in the current suffocating rock landscape; on the contrary, the opposite. It is a box set published last year containing two audio CDs and a video DVD capturing a concert of the group in North Carolina; as sometimes happens in these mixed audio/video releases, the DVD setlist is slightly shortened compared to the more complete and extended content of the CD.

As per tradition for exquisitely made-in-USA southern rock productions, there's a striking contrast between the naivety, obsolescence, even the tackiness of the late psychedelic packaging and the hippie appearance of the musicians, all measured against the absolute class, attention, skill, sensitivity, and modern precision of the music that flows from their inspiration. These five Georgians take the stage surrounded by drapes and rugs, quietly bouncing here and there, yet sensibly shaking their heads adorned with hair and beards worthy of Woodstock; the drummer looks like Bluebeard as he casually beats, belly forward and shoulders back, in a style that couldn't be more relaxed and sure, and indeed the sound is strong, masculine, perfect… and it sounds of wood, skin, and iron, as the sound of drums should. The keyboardist always keeps one hand on the Hammond and the other on the piano, sometimes electric, sometimes acoustic, doing what it takes to relieve the music from hard rock rigidity and guide it towards more colorful sensibilities, giving it jazz, blues, pop, rhythm & blues, rock'n'roll shades. Every time he stretches his hands, he does something perhaps scholastic, yet appropriate, especially tasty and dynamic.

The standout, however, is the frontman Charlie Starr: he sings with a strong and sincere voice while literally caressing the guitar dangling below his waist, with disarming naturalness and touch. He plays sober and simple, but every note he hits is taken with admirable awareness, rhythmic and harmonic control. He could do anything, at any speed, but instead, he does what's useful, necessary, and essential making every passage on his instrument important. It is strange to enjoy in symbiosis his old-time freak aspect, with exaggerated hair and awful sideburns grown to the base of his neck, simultaneously with his hands that travel skillfully up and down the fretboard without ever attacking or challenging it, accompanying it as if it were family. When he then puts the metal slide on his pinky to perform some slide, it's equally remarkable how he manages to enter and exit that technique with naturalness and grace, alternately with nonchalant transition to regular technique, arranged with the remaining three fingers, all with enviable touch, intonation, and expressiveness, satisfying, true food for the soul.

The album contains twenty audio tracks and sixteen of them also on video. To represent them all, I'll choose the sublime "Ain't Much Left Of Me", which opens swinging with the instruments barely touched, upon whose moods Starr suddenly opens up the guitar volume to introduce the characteristic open G major riff, upon which everyone then pounces. It's a feast of rolling stoner country blues (when a guitar tuned in open G is in action, it's inevitable to sense the teachings of the master Keith Richards, who introduced it into rock). With supreme flavor and roundness of interaction among the five instrumentalists, this is just another beautiful song as old as rock yet still pleasing, rolling happily alternating intense parts with intimate pauses, until after the solo comes the live variant: instead of everyone picking up again for the third and final verse, Bluebeard introduces a half-slow pachydermic groove, which once the guitars kick in is recognized as nothing other than the thunderous “When the Levee Breaks”, the closing masterpiece of Zeppelin's fourth album. Starr pays homage by singing a verse amidst the general jubilation, then Blackberry Smoke resume and finish the song in their own way. What a show! Valentino Rossi would say and so do I: too cool!