Gov't Mule
Life Before Insanity

THE REVIEW

There is something profound in simple things. Something sweet and at the same time sad. Like the blues.

The moment comes when you find it tattooed on your skin. It's the blues that chooses you. And you realize you can't do without it.

It's when we don't build expectations that we leave our weak points exposed. And simple things have the ability and ease to get inside you and be pumped throughout your body, in the blink of an eye.

Warren Haynes has the blues in his blood. In his hoarse and passionate voice soaked in bourbon. But above all, in his six-string universe founded on sweat and dedication. His guitar talent is not a gift of providence, but the result of the sacrifice of years spent cultivating the harsh confederate lands.

And with his Gov't Mule, he delights us for some decades with a visceral rock that sets itself south of no north, mixing rock'n'roll with blues, country with soul, in the manner of the timeless Allman Brothers, of which he was a member for a long time.

His is a music with a good soul, straightforward like good wine, offering itself without compromises or interests. Warm and saturated sounds inlaid in mahogany, which paint the sensitive reality, where color comes before shape.

"Life Before Insanity" might not be their best album. It's simply one of the various honest and commendable works that this band has given us. From the gibsonian distortions of "Wandering Child" and "Bad Little Doggie," which seem to bleed out of the stereo, to the penetrating fills of the title track, everything flows naturally like an improvisation and without a real moment of faltering.

But Haynes and company mostly gift us some of the best ballads of their career, "Fallen Down" and "Tastes Like Wine" above all, songs born to thrill in the open air, and for which the four walls of a recording studio might feel a little tight. The live dimension remains the ideal stage for these rockers from another time.

In the end, the Mules allow a few too many minutes, in this as in other works. Almost a professional deformation for them. But as we know, these are people who don't hold back and always throw their hearts over the obstacle.

And this is the blues.