Non Fiction (1983)

I see that Robert Christgau has rated this a quasi-notch higher than the first, eponymous Blasters album (A vs. A-). I won't split hairs about that, not so much because I agree but more because I am too busy reveling in the bracing sounds found on both of them—and besides, the two of them together add up to only a little more than an hour of this glorious music. This one has a much higher ratio of originals to covers (9-2 by my count) and they are just as hard to differentiate as they were on the first. But the sounds range as wide, the band is just as tight if not more so, and why the hell can't I get this blasted volume knob to go any higher? What?! Can't hear you! I know people complain about retro-oriented acts because a) it's nothing new, b) you can always go back to the originals if you really want to hear it, and c) some combination of both, including arguments based on race. On some level I sympathize—notably when the retro-oriented acts are demonstrably inferior to their sources, which happens way, way more often than not. But I don't see it that way with the Blasters. Their appreciation for their forebears is written into every moment, but they're not simply aping the sounds they like. They are marinated in the stuff, with extra helpings of love sweet love L-O-V-E love. Like, oh, say, Creedence Clearwater Revival before them, they consciously root themselves in familiar traditions yet manage to transcend them at the same time, simply by staking them out and updating them so forthrightly, warping and adding to and redefining them at will, yet subtly, hurtling them right beyond the boundaries of time itself, where they can exist in eternally enlightened present. This is nearly as old now as they music they were drawing from then—we are getting into whole networks of historical bridging and networks and access points—but it's as fresh and galvanizing and surprising and deep as if they had released it in 1948, well before any of them had been born. I know others might differ but I count that as irreducibly good and when I'm in the mood for the Blasters nothing else will do and the pleasures last a long time. Essential.

(Testament box)