No one goes to a Jon Spencer Blues Explosion show to hear excellent lyrics. In fact, you can tell the show is heating up when the lyrics make the least sense. At the 930 Club Thursday night, the New York City trio’s show reached a climax as Spencer dissolved into a hissy-fit of howls, moans and shouts of “baby!”, “c’mon!” and “Blues Explosion!”, while powerhouse drummer Russell Simins manhandled his kit with funky aplomb.
Spencer has his Explosion, which also includes stellar guitarist Judah Bauer, on their first tour in several years, supporting his latest release, “Plastic Fang”. The first portion of the show serviced that rather uneven disc---which seems to have some sort of muddled vampire/beast theme---with songs like “Sweet and Sour”, “Down in the Beast”, “Over and Over” and the band’s latest single, “She Said”. Spencer isn’t a blues formalist, of course, but the gutbucket groove achieved when his guitar locks in with Bauer’s swamp-dog riffs and Siminis’ often astonishing drumming achieves a pastiche that is, in its’ primal urgency, a modern kin to the blues. And much better live than on disc.
The final third of the set was the payoff, as the Explosion built momentum and turned to it’s best new song, “Money Rock ‘N’ Roll”, in tandem with classic stompers “Bellbottoms”, “Blues X Man” and the wiggly “Magical Colors”. Spencer, one of rock’s most charismatic figures (whose current style is a disheveled variant of Elvis circa-1968), nearly swallowed the microphone as he hurled his wiry frame into every note. And the result, yes indeed, if not quite the blues, was quite satisfying.
Washington Post, 2002
