Respect the Dead
Emotional storm clouds roil over the powerful songs of Otis Taylor, surely the most important presence to emerge on the contemporary blues scene sinceCorey Harris. Taylor's stories of racial struggle and heartbreak ring with a near-mystical sense of portent and crackle with an elemental weight akin toJohn Lee Hooker's while embracing the sonic edges of psychedelic rock. This disc is even better than 2001's critically heraldedWhite African, upping the intensity with numbers that probe the lingering ties of slavery ("Ten Million Slaves"), the legacy of the Freedom Riders ("32nd Time"), and the dark staples of suicide and murder ("I Like You, But I Don't Love You," "Three Stripes on a Cadillac").Taylor's slightly hoarse, husky voice seems risen from the Delta mud. It's a mighty instrument, whispering and wailing--sometimes, thanks to careful mixing, sounding like a ghost slipping through the cracks of time. And he's an even better musician-arranger, whose command of slide guitar and effects makes for shivery peals that underpin the drama of his singing, and who maps out an entirely new vocabulary for electric banjo. Churning one-chord Mississippi blues, African rhythms, and electronically intensified guitar riffs all blend into a terrain no other contemporary bluesman is exploring. In fact, this may be the sound of genius.--Ted Drozdowski