Vice Versa: Bisexuality And The Eroticism

Somehow the grandfather of British blues still had the fire in his belly to record a strong album almost 40 years after he began his storied career. Buddy Whittington acquits himself well as the latest in a long line of hotshot guitarists for this multi-instrumentalist, who still does his best work on harmonica. He still admires long-dead bluesman J.B. Lenoir, including "Voodoo Music" here. A lot of credit for this strong outing goes to R.S. Field, lyricist and sometime producer for Webb Wilder. "Long Story Short" would pass for a Wilder tune were it not for Mayall's distinctive voice.

One of the band's masterworks, Juju sees Siouxsie and the Banshees operating in a squalid wall of sound dominated by tribal drums, swirling and piercing guitars, and Siouxsie Sioux's fractured art-attack vocals. If not for John McGeoch's marvelous high-pitched guitars, here as reminiscent of Joy Division as his own work in Magazine, the album would rank as the band's most gothic release. Siouxsie and company took things to an entirely new level of darkness on Juju, with the singer taking delight in sinister wordplay on the disturbing "Head Cut," creeping out listeners in the somewhat tongue-in-cheek "Halloween," and inspiring her bandmates to push their rhythmic witches brew to poisonous levels of toxicity.

Although not a blues band in the truest sense of the word, consider this their 'roots music' album. Frontman Little Mike Markowitz turns in a batch of original tunes that more than tip their collective and stylistic hat to Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Louis Prima and James Cotton. The band goes through its workmanlike paces and that same blue-collar approach applies to the lyrical themes on these songs, full of tried and true formulaic stories about sex, the road and bad whiskey and women. It's a shame that the blues can sometimes be reduced down to a pile of cliches but at least the musical side of the equation works.