If you’re looking for more punk rock from SideoneDummy, would you accept the kind that goes back 80 years instead of 35? This Indiana family trio—the good reverend, his bro, and wife—are known for touring their rural Hoosier asses off, in the work ethic, aggression and style of the mostly southern bluesmen and folkies that founded this style in the ‘20s, and ‘30s. On their albums, Mr. Peyton especially likes his evil blues licks on the gee-tar like Beelzebub himself is waiting at the crossroads to steal another soul, having already availed hisself of the ones that predated what you hear here, starting with Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson, with plenty of helpings of Jimmie Rogers, Son House, Charley Patton, Mississippi John Hurt, Leadbelly, Willie Brown, T-Bone Walker, Blind Blake, and Skip James, up through Lightnin’ Hopkins, Elmore James, and the first Sonny Boy Williamson, among others. Which is to say that Peyton’s guitar—especially when he applies his slide—slips and skips, dallies, tickles, and stings in equal measure, backing a voice best described as a strident cross between Ralph Stanley and Pere Ubu’s David Thomas: dark, scratchy, heavy, powerful, and marble-mouthed. It’s the sharpest accompaniment to his quick-busy, breakneck playing, missus Breezy’s washboard scraping, and his brother Jayme ’s drumming, rock solid simple like D.J. Bonebreak of X. This is how Gun Club would have sounded if they were more traditionally bent. And it jumps and jives like the best blues of the pre-Chess era does; only it’s 2010, not the roaring 20s or the depression! (sideonedummy.com)
