"Nope," from their earlier CD One Word, is a sweet love song that contrasts blaringly with the hard scratching of Bukka White's "Shake 'Em On Down." The stately raga-like solemnity of Burnside's "Goin' Down South" leads into the hearty good humor of the band's own bluegrassy chant "Lucy's Lament," vocals grating out through vintage Turner bullet microphones, the kind usually employed to give blues harmonica players their flattened, raucous sound.
On the new CD, in addition to the slightly sharper production, the musicianship has improved. Kammerer's vocals are a bit stronger and surer and his guitar riffs more varied, while Johnson's percussion kit technique has expanded. If anything, there was a slight sense of hesitation in the playing on the first CD, which is gone on the new one. But you have to listen closely for these changes; they're subtle and not critical.
The band also stretches their song structures a little more on the new CD. The easy shuffling beat of "In The Hole" belies a macabre story of a boy who falls in a hole and meets first a rat and then an unexpected fate: "My mother said you live until you die/I never thought my mom would tell a lie/Black rat and me just keep on keepin' on/We're dead down here and still singin' this song." "Shake It" is a Chicago-bluesy soul jam assisted by David Lipkind on harmonica and Lewi Longmire on Hammond B-3 organ. And "Boom Boom Room East Blues" pounds like a sledgehammer: "I got a woman/She long and she tall/Sleeps in the kitchen/Legs out in the hall...Born as a baby/Into a girl/Became The Woman/That Ended the World."
Not surprisingly the band got an enthusiastic reception overseas. Audiences in the UK "went apeshit!" Kammerer reports, noting, however, that "they often do that over here [in the US] as well." But "people in the UK are into blues, and into the offshoots of."
Far from the first rootsy American act to find acclaim across the pond, Hillstomp is planning a more extensive European tour this Fall, after which they're going to play a few shows in the Midwest and then take some time off from the road. "We'd really like to get back in the basement and start drinking beer and just playing music together for awhile," says Johnson. "That's how this thing was born, and we'd like to get back to that for a bit. It would do us some good."
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