Hard Line (1985)

On Hard Line the Blasters get their gospel on more self-consciously (and more awkwardly) than ever, turning to the Jubilee Train Singers and the Jordanaires for sweetening, for effect, and perhaps even for the power of the Lord. The one cover this time is by John Mellencamp, along with a couple of collaborations with John Doe. As usual the originals dominate and they stand with and even above the rest. But the calculated gestures work some toward making this third in line for me of their three great studio albums. Although just because it's third in line doesn't mean it isn't great. It rocks low and sweet and hard, like they know how to do. Yet at this point, after years of constant touring and rarely getting their heads up above semi-obscurity, there's a nagging feeling of exhaustion worrying the edges, as though somebody were pushing them for a breakout, or even more likely, they were pushing themselves. Semi-obscurity grinds fine as poverty, even if it keeps the cachet pure. Not long after this album Dave Alvin would split for a solo career, and not long after that their stuff would start showing up in movies such as Someone to Watch Over Me, Bull Durham, and From Dusk Til Dawn. It's good movie music, of course, but I think their stuff more properly lives on in blood-bucket clubs in the middle of the night all over the land, wearing their rock 'n' roll hearts on their sleeves. It's no kind of life for a good person—you can talk to Hank Williams about that, who died before he was 30—but to me those dank stinking clubs are where the Blasters are most naturally vital. In many ways the end feels near here (which I understand could be just another way of saying "apocalyptic"). The songs and playing are as tight and sharp and explosive and vibrant and appealing as ever on Hard Line and I won't argue with anyone who might even find it their best. But it feels close to the end to me on some basic level. Phil Alvin has somehow kept them together to this day, albeit intermittently and often only for one special occasion or another. But some of the joy and exuberance and hence some of their most natural power is beginning to ebb away and this album often feels as close as they ever got to genuinely sad—not necessarily such a good thing.

(Testament box)

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)

The Blasters (1981)

Stationed at their post in the punk-rock nether regions of Los Angeles, label mates with the likes of X, Dream Syndicate, and the Gun Club, the Blasters reached out across the land to broadcast the grand traditions of rock 'n' roll, from Memphis to New Orleans to Texas to St. Louis to Chicago and elsewhere, working rockabilly variants, rockin' blues, rockin' country, and good old straightforward rock 'n' roll the way we know it and the way we love it: sassy, loose, warm, irresistible, worth playing all night. They concocted a brew that will never go out of style as long as any of us lives and that will probably endure beyond the end of our lifetimes too. You know it already, and it belongs on a space capsule hurtling beyond the edge of our solar system with the Beethoven and the Chuck Berry. The longest song here is three and a half minutes. Most are closer to two minutes flat. The whole thing barely lasts half an hour. There are love songs, sad songs, nervous songs, songs about funky beds and Highway 61 and dancing all night. They jump, they move, they shuffle. It's hard to write about this stuff because it's so much pleasure to listen, and the pleasures are so distracting it's hard to articulate. The rhythm section is tight as fresh rubber, the guitars supple and lean and fast, the rhythms as compelling as freight trains and riverboats and cannonades. Flourishes of barrelhouse piano and raunchy sax and blowing harp are added as needed. Complain if you must about the strained vocals of Phil Alvin; for me, his strange affect is simply all of a piece with the convincing, often breathtaking facility the Blasters evince for playing rock 'n' roll, fresh and ancient and fleeting and eternal at once. More than half the songs here are originals but I defy anyone to pick them out from the covers without a cheat sheet. The Blasters are plain marinated in what they do, and the themes of the originals—evident even from the titles, such as "Border Radio" and "American Music"—are made up equally of an impulse to mythologize and just to be part of it, all of it, the history and traditions and the raw energy and exuberance and the joy at playing and discovering it for themselves. This one works nicely on repeat, played very loud.

(Testament box)