By Monk
The title of this album is just how I like my steak, with the blood still pumping through its veins and enough meat and gristle on the bone to keep me chewing rather than just biting in and gulping it down. In this regard, this is also an album that lives up to its name, as it is vibrant and visceral and so raw you can suck the very marrow off its bones and chew on the accompanying gristle until you’re ready to let it slide pleasingly into your audio digestive system.
Following on from the old school Americana/blues roots tradition of recording in their own living rooms or on their door stoops, the album was laid down in an abandoned house in Nashville (a city which in its very self lends a sense of inevitable prescience to the opus), with the four musicians laying down their contributions in separate rooms – and producer Dan Auerbach on a completely different floor. The result is a remarkably and surprising cohesive album, and one which at the same time echoes the isolation, both personal and physical, of those concerned.
On first listen, ‘Medium Raw’ drew so many comparators for me, from Woodie Guthrie to Lightning Hopkins, RL Burnside to Bob Log III (the latter especially in Mullis’ modern twist on the cotton bowl mien), but as the album progresses you hear him cry with his own voice, his plaintive appellants touching on the torch song laconic louch-noirness of Cohen (‘Beauty Queen’) and Waits (‘Go Down Swinging’) as much as they do the amplified blue collar aestheticism of Dan Baird or Jason Ringenberg.
An intriguing album, in every sense. Beautiful yet repellant, and all the more mysterious for being so.
- ‘Medium Raw‘ is released on Friday (10 January).
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