Album Review: Seasick Steve - Hubcap Music

Blues rock's most embraced mainstream hillbilly Seasick Steve is back with Hubcap Music, his sixth album in the past decade. Along for the ride are his ever-present swag of homemade, deconstructed and reconstructed guitars, drums and “assorted junk string things”. It's part of the man's charm. And these 11 tracks are indeed charming, a rough-around-the-edges assortment of down and dirty bar ditties to some more tender moments of sentimental longing and regret. It's an enjoyable ride, if not sometimes slightly unvarying, but it comes from a place of genuine exuberance for playing the blues so it's hard not to get onboard, nor ignore Steve's wry persona injected into every drawl, guitar twang and footstomp.

That hillbilly shtick is at play from the get-go with the aptly-titled Down On The Farm. It's swift, stomping saloon blues with bursts of rough chords and Steve's drawn out coos. The next few invariably follow suit but Keep On Keepin' On has an absolutely infectious, anthemic chant, “It's righteous”, cooly echoed throughout. It's not until almost midway that the album begins to unravel the more delicate moments we know Steve is capable of dishing out. Over You is the first where the man just relents and lets that more rambling storyteller take over, a rattling slide falling beside his voice. It's slightly overrun by the sweet female duet in Purple Shadows with only the light brush of his offsiders interrupting this intimate moment.

Just about every instrument is thrown into mix for show-stopping finale Coast Is Clear, horns blasting and guns blazing no doubt, and the best element of all is hearing Steve's natural singing voice stretch above his derisive drawl.