Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Xtra Acme

Today I am discussing an album that I have listened to many times over the years that I have owned it, and I still don’t know how I feel about it. Formed in 1991, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion are credited with starting the whole Garage punk thing, while simultaneously never getting credit for their hard work. All through the 90s, while everyone else was playing alternative or some breed of hardcore, Jon Spencer and his cavalcade of awesome were plugging away, making punk music that owed more to classic blues and soul than it did to the Ramones. When this genre was eventually picked up by the mainstream, it was newcomers like the White Stripes, The Hives, the Strokes, and The Vines that made a name for themselves. Jon Spencer doesn’t seem to have said much about this injustice, the band took a short hiatus for a few years and are now exploding the blues much as they always have.

When I first bought this album, I really didn’t know what to do with it. I kind of still don’t. It is all over the place. Spencer delivers his vocals in a classic southern ministerial style, Russell Simms pounds the most crazy drum lines into the ground, moving easily from a vicious funk to an almost gentle blues. The guitar work from Judah Bauer and Spencer are competent and clean, intricate without tripping over itself. The song is the goal and it is delivered with skill and power.

At the same time the band never takes this seriously. The music is delivered as if it is the most important thing ever, while the lyrics are almost nonsensical in their profound discussion of the mundane. An example:

And then, at the end of our beautiful date,

Maybe we’ll take in a movie

Maybe we’ll go get a hot dog

Baby, you ever had a hot dog?

Onion?

Mustard?

Sauerkraut?

I’d like to eat a hot dog with you baby

I’d like to hang out on the corner with you

Maybe at the top of the empire state building

Anything that you want

So long as we’re together.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?! This kind of in your face tongue in cheek really differentiates the explosion from their more popular disciples. Jack white has his moments of levity, but the White Stripes are mostly characterized by an artistic focus that verges on creepy, crosses the line, and takes a dump in the line’s mom’s china cabinet. By contrast the explosion mocks the very idea of artistic integrity, while exemplifying it to a ridiculous degree. Think Little Richard meets Frank Zappa. 

While awesome at times, the songs often feel like inside jokes that leave me out. This is kind of disconcerting, and can take me out of the action. In particular Soul Trance, while a lovely collaboration with Dub Narcotic Sound System, is a five minute long joke track that really breaks up the album’s flow. Lap Dance has a similar effect, and is only a few tracks before Soul Trance, which makes the album really come screeching to a halt. The album is also super long, and some of the tracks really drag. 

These may seem like quibbles but they got in the way of my ability to enjoy the band for years. Its not that I don't like bands that refuse to take themselves seriously, on the contrary, but the effect was like listening to humorous tape someone made in college. There are moments of brilliance, separated by hours of giggling and the sounds of lighters. 

All the negatives were set against some great performances and tracks that would get stuck in my head. even the aforementioned Lap Dance is kind of a bizarre ear worm. So I really didn’t know how I was going to fall on this, but i did finally 'get' this album. I was making yet another five hour drive to New Jersey from Massachusetts and put the album on around the time I hit I-84. By the time it ended two odd hours later in upstate New York, I was totally sold. Obviously the focus is the music, where all the positives are. The intentionally uninteresting lyrics serve to force a distractable public to pay attention to what has always been the most fun in music: the music itself. 

oh right. duh.