Future's conscience-stricken coke rap and 15 more reviews of recent releases
by Luca Cimarusti, Leor Galil, Kim Kelly, Monica Kendrick, Peter Margasak, Bill Meyer, Philip Montoro, Erin Osmon, Miles Raymer, Tal Rosenberg and Kevin Warwick
Kent Burnside, My World Is So Cold (Lucky 13) Kent Burnside's grandfather, the late R.L. Burnside, spent most of his life playing raw, single-chord "trance blues" in jukes around his hometown of Holly Springs, Mississippi. Like any self-respecting son (or grandson) of the blues, Burnside remains true to his lineage while blazing his own trail: on his debut album, My World Is So Cold, he duplicates R.L.'s distinctive style with almost eerie accuracy, reinforcing it with tough, bass-heavy bombast borrowed from modern rock and R&B. His guitar playing, distorted by tremolo and wah-wah as the occasion demands, brings garage-punk feistiness to the atavistic, modally constructed lines and relentlessly propulsive rhythms he learned from his grandfather.…[ Read more ]