Canned Heat
Hallelujah

Although not acclaimed by critics, to the one writing this, this is the favorite album among those by Canned Heat. Not that the previous ones are any less beautiful and monumental, but in my opinion, this is their album with the most decisive and imaginative sounds. To be clear: every work by Canned Heat is always and in any case another dive into a boiling, volcanic mud pool, reeking of sulfur and sweat, a primordial broth from which super furry and over-obese creatures destined to have their hearts explode are born. And it's fair to say that even this "Hallelujah" cannot entirely escape this fate, and this is evident right from the opener, the piano-driven boogie "Same All Over."

Nonetheless, this is their boldest album, because the solutions from an arrangement and structural point of view are extreme, before or rather than songwriting. So there is as much boogie as you want, but it is either very noisy, crazy, and wild, with changes in rhythm and grunts, as in "Sic'em Pigs," or it is the festive and drunken one of "Big Fat," an ode to life in which the 300 lbs of "The Bear" are an immense store of love for others, good to always carry around, just in case.

"Time Was" is practically a Californian root rock of that era; "Huautla" is an instrumental with an ethnic base among dozens of drums, which incidentally starts on a strange, cadenced rhythm that seems like a kind of waltz (!). The supernatural harmonica solo, whose passages would only have been credible if executed by an electric guitar. The Bear's harmonica does everything that is best found in "Hallelujah" (although the band's largest animal never holds back even vocally), and in "I'm Her Man" it does what Ray Manzarek did with the Hammond. Extreme solutions from an arrangement point of view, as mentioned.

Then comes the moment to tackle the subject of psychedelia, a taste that no one could escape at the time. Generally, the Canned Heat's psychedelia usually blends greatly with the more traditional blues, while still remaining at its service. For "Hallelujah," if it continues to be so in "Change My Ways," the same cannot be said for "Do Not Enter": here it is unclear whether psychedelia is the excuse to still play some good old blues or whether the roles have (finally?) been reversed. As a seal, an "abstract" boogie to sway to, deliberately delicate, almost intentionally superficial, and the concluding "Down In The Gutter, But Free," a dragged super blues, pulled by the hair, from a place full of drunks and yawning old hookers: only this damn band tonight still wants to, let them go to hell passing through the smoky puddle from which they emerged.

The Bear and his friends finally emerge entirely from the cage of their (superlative) blues and, while staying nearby, manage to be a band capable of being, of going, beyond the blues.

Hallelujah.