The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Plastic Fang

An archetypal album. Those familiar with Jon Spencer and his group might stop reading here, as it would all be quite clear. Nothing contrary this time, on the line of a fresh and animistic rock n’ roll, not forgetting the past and with a gaze towards the blood, infused with naturalness, glancing this way and that. I don't watch conventional TV, but last night I caught five minutes of a Verdone film on Rete4: one minute of story and four of the opening credits. It was stunning, a zenithal fixed shot on a section of a dark wooden table. On the right, an ashtray with a photograph slowly burning inside it. On the left, the titles sequenced. And there you are, darting your eyes from one side to the other to figure out who was behind that film which, even if it disappoints right away, initially had all the trappings of an Italian or Italo-American classic, perhaps a Leone.

Here, the Blues Explosion of this album writes according to the rules of an old, strict grammar full of the dusty charm of someone who truly knows, but it uses a crackling and defiant language which, however, seems not to want to disrespect anyone. On one side, there's all the dangerous potential of a fireworks factory in Gragnano (Na) left in the hands of young arsonists, and on the other, there's a certain earnest diligence, almost inherited from an early Springsteen approach, or that serene science of wisdom held by the blues elders.

So, we are right at the elemental factors, good and evil, black and white. Plastic Fang is an album that resembles a friend of mine who's a builder, who can't speak either dialect or Italian very well, who has the kind of sexual fortitude of a Sardinian ram without ewes for a few years, and who has the coolness to always make the most right and sensible decisions, in any circumstance, like a pater familias. A rough album, then, but with a good soul. An album of character and of the search for purer and less educated sounds, wandering backwards. An album that does not start revolutions and convinces for precisely that reason. A dedication from Spencer to the fathers of the past, as if he wanted to embody various Elvis or Buddy Guys in our era. Without missing the chance to exalt the most lazy and immediate anarchy, without saturated and/or superfluous conceptual fats. Certainly, a work that, like all others, live, is kerosene that waits for nothing else but the incendiary warmth of the audience which over the years, he has deservedly gained.

Pay attention to the CD booklet. It seems all of a piece and excessively flamboyant. Once the cellophane is removed, it remains flamboyant but not all of a piece: it's multilayered, peeling like an onion, as if wanting to ease us along a path leading straight to the heart of a radical rock, with zero interests and compromises.