By: Matthew Fox

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

The new Black Joe CD, although stylistically deviant from his other two albums, delivers just as readily, if not more. Aside from a slight decline near the end of the record, I have been dancing in my car singing along, with or without other people whenever Scandalous is playing. If you’re a fan of anything blues, soul, or old fashion rock n’ roll, pick up the album and give it a shot; you will not be disappointed.

The first track, “Livin’ In the Jungle,” starts off the record with a powerful and funky feel that resembles that of the first track on Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is!, “Gunpowder.” From here, the album goes into a slower, but bluesier track “I’m Gonna Leave You,” and a light-hearted humorous track, “Booty City,” which proves that Black Joe truly cannot go through an album without expressing his somewhat crass love of women.

“She’s So Scandalous,” my personal favorite, delves somewhat from the norm for Black Joe and his Honeybears, but is one of the more powerful songs on the album. Starting out with just a basic drum beat and guitar, the song progressively layers on vocals, bass, and horns until by the chorus the group has intertwined all these different aspect into a coherently and exceptionally moving track.

Immediately following this is “Messin’,” which once again sounds almost nothing like other Black Joe material, but makes him even more enjoyable. When I first heard this track, I started looking through the album credits to see if the vocals could be contributed to Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, but turns out Black Joe just knows how to emulate that of a white folk singer. The thumping bass and gritty guitar make for a well written blues song, and is somewhat of a climax for the album for me.

“Mustang Ranch” is, as every Black Joe CD needs, a spoken word track telling a story about Lord knows what. Half the time his incoherent babble is only pieced together by contexts clues of words that are occasionally understood as English, which is why we all love it. The rest of the album is fairly strong, aside from my suspicions of “Since I Met You Baby” sounding oddly similar to Ray Charles’ “I’m Busted,” but maybe I’m just crazy. “Jesus Took My Hand” originally made me wince at Black Joe’s vocals, which are not necessarily always on key, but the song has grown onto me, and I enjoy listening to it just as much as the rest of songs.

Overall, Black Joe has never let us down, and this album attests to this. He and the Honeybears are showing no signs of slowing, and their fan base is growing at a rapid pace. Everyone I have exposed to this CD has fallen in love with it, and if you still haven’t given it a listen, I suggest you spend the rest of what’s left of your day doing just that.

Matthew Fox lives in Nashville, TN. He drives a Jeep, frequently looks up cute pictures of animals online, and once won $15 off a lottery ticket. An archive of his blog posts can be found at foxtalks.wordpress.com.