20 Miles
I’m a Lucky Guy (Fat Possum/Epitaph)
Punk rock, in the view of Mississippi’s Fat Possum Records, has the same unfinished quality of the best blues, which is more or less what British rockers like the Rolling Stones believed in the ’60s. So the second album by 20 Miles (a side project of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion guitarist Judah Bauer) recalls early Stones and even Iggy Pop’s Stooges as much as the traditional stuff. Bauer is no Keith Richards, so despite some well-timed shots of slide guitar in “All I Want,” the album proves blues inspiration doesn’t always lead to “Let It Bleed.” But the rhythmic intensity on the faster songs (“Talk to Me”), and the surprising sentimentality of the slower ones (“Sympathize”), makes “I’m a Lucky Guy” a strong complement to the label’s native-South philosophy.
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