Alive Naturalsound Records: BLACK DIAMOND HEAVIES

Friday, January 25, 2008

Anonymous said...: Brightest Young Things - live review :
The Black Diamond Heavies are another two-piece, except John Wesley Myers plays a distorted Rhodes piano instead of a guitar and another keyboard for the bass. His voice is one of those true whiskey and cigarette creations, somehow unbelievably hoarse and wild on some songs and soulfully throaty on slower things–somewhere in between Tom Waits and Gregg Allman. Maybe it was just hangover form the high of the opening band, but their louder faster garage-meets-gospel songs could be a bit numbing when strung together. But then they played the Leon Russell-ish slow-burning soul ballad All to Hell, which ended up climaxing a lot harder live and horn-less than it does on the new record, (Every Damn Time) and I may have gotten something in my eyes by accident, just like some dust or something. And when drummer Van Campbell pumped out a mid-tempo blues beat like on Poor Brown Sugar and Myers spit out some lyrics about his car breaking down and ran through a simple blues progression that built up into a grinding pounding two-note solo while he banged his greasy long hair and howled, the Nashville boys sounded plucked from a dirty south as dangerous as any hustling/flowing Samuel Jackson movie. If only every white boy who tried to sing the blues had the taste and testicles of these two acts, we’d have a lot less bullshit to parody.; January 27, 2008 at 10:41 AM