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Rating: It seems that the term blues comes from an expression similar to our "to have a devil by the hair" (to have the blue devils), something akin to feeling bad for a life that isn't going splendidly. Now, what a young man from El Paso, an avid fan of the sunny Blondie (of whom he imitates the platinum blonde hair), might have in common with the harsh existence of dark-skinned backs bent over cotton fields for a few cents a day may seem a mystery. But Jeffrey Lee Pierce's infatuation with the devil's music has deep roots, going back to when, as a boy, he had hung a poster of his diva in his room while simultaneously heavy vinyls of the dark Delta tradition (Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton, Skip James) spun on the turntable. With the Gun Club, he paid homage to those masters with hallucinatory punk versions ("Preachin' the Blues") and I myself appreciated the black power of his voice live, which was really impressive for a small-statured man who seemed even smaller at the center of a stage between two lanky beanpoles like Kid Congo Powers and Patricia Morrison. I believe Pierce had assimilated those tragic stories filled with death, violence, mystery, and passion into his subconscious and made them his own. I happened to see an amateur video of Jeffrey playing "Alabama Blues" with a sad air in a Dutch apartment with lace curtains on the window, unable to hide the European cars parked on the street, and then I think that his fate wasn't so different from the Negroes who sing in a foreign land about the pain for a mother of earth that is no longer theirs. Completely dressed in black, with raven hair (the platinum blonde now a distant memory), Jeffrey expresses his negritude through murder ballads. His transformation has happened: he becomes Ramblin' Jeffrey Lee inventing a blues alter ego just like another pale face (John Fahey) had done years before with Blind Joe Death.
The need to make a record that would exorcise his ghosts, Jeffrey realized far from his homeland towards the end of 1991, when "Pastoral Hide and Seek" by the Gun Club had already been released (with little success). He recruits Cypress Grove (actually Tony Melik, a nickname taken from a Skip Jones track) a young and talented guitarist with whom years before he had struck up a friendship in an English pub and Willie Love (the drummer Simon Fish, in the Gun Club circle) and goes to the Netherlands to record for the French label New Rose (blessed be it) a full nine covers of old blues and two tracks written by himself.
I’ll be upfront and say right away that when JLP tackles the "traditionals" in a traditional way, he's not irresistible. Thus, the same "Alabama Blues" (Robert Wilkins), "Pony Blues" (Charlie Patton/Son House), "Long Long Gone" (Frankie Lee Sims), "Future Blues" (Wille Brown) give the impression of not taking off as they might have in the hands of "professionals" who have spent their lives on the twelve bars. Just to give an example, I imagine a "Bad Luck And Trouble" (Otis Hicks) in the claws of an oldster (white) like Seasick Steve and the incendiary treatment he would have done, stripping it to the bone without giving up the fireworks. But the record suddenly becomes magnificent when Jeffrey decides to plug in the instruments, with amplifiers scattered through the studio rooms to get the rawest and fullest sound possible. Then we see the "old" Bad Indian again, leaping defiantly onto a horse grabbing it by the mane and off he goes! The driving "Goin' Down" (Don Nix) may not have the firepower of other more famous versions (riveting is the one by SRV & Jeff Beck!) but Pierce's deep voice lashes and caresses at the same time, sending shivers down your spine worse than when a woman leaves you and you go deeper and deeper, yet you see a glimpse of light in having finally become free.
I believe "Moanin' in the moonlight" (Chester Burnett) is the most rock track Jeffrey has played since the heyday of the first Gun Club: great drum work, the bass line and the biting guitars at the verge of noise, the harmonica puffs, and Jeffrey asks not to open that door. However, my favorite is among the acoustic covers, that kind of falsetto gospel of "Hardtime Killin' Floor Blues" (Skip James) over the bare fabric of two guitars. We are around a manor house of the old secessionist South set on fire, casting black shadows of those silently witnessing the spectral scene, the sad and gloomy lament of Jeffrey makes the white skeletons vibrate in the starry night like the breath of a dark night bird... this man is not normal, he is the reincarnation of some old voodoo shaman emerging from the shadows with a shriveled and shrunken head on the microphone stand.
The two original tracks are 100% Gun Club. Like "Stranger in my heart" recaptures the feline snap of old times, the psychobilly round sinuously drawn in the style of the Cramps. Jeffrey gets lost in the city looking for the foreign girl he had in his heart but who was destined to break it, his verses are sad premonitions of what the future holds for him: "... I was brother to your everyday life, now you hear me cry / Why did you change? Is there a stranger in my heart". Indeed, his Japanese partner Romi, bassist of the band since the "Mother Juno" days (1987), would leave him for the drummer Nick Sanderson (I have always wondered what his angular drumming, a legacy of belonging to a glacial group like Clock DVA, had to do with the warmth of the Gun Club) and consequently, Jeffrey lost another good reason to give up the mix of drugs and liquors that would lead to his final collapse in 1996.
But the masterpiece (believe it or not) of the disc is not a cover of Son House or Charlie Patton, it's an immortal track by Jeffrey, the long "Go tell the mountain" which would also inspire an autobiography. The hypnotically expanded rhythm and Jeffrey prowling with caution like a black panther on the edges of the wilderness, shouting (but he never shouts, modulates the extension of his voice) his pain for a friendship that is no more. This time the guitar launches into a piercing solo that drains the soul, with eyes closed we nod our heads following the blows of the wahwah that spread softly into the dark of the room... when the last note dies it feels a bit like we've died too.
May the earth be light for you, Jeffrey.
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