Record Reviews

The Blacks

Just Like Home (Bloodshot)

As bleak as a mud yard full of broken toys, as beautiful as daisies growing through the rusted-through floorboards of a long-abandoned car, the Blacks are a hard lot to categorize. Imagine a too-long trip on the Tilt-A-Whirl ("I'd Like to Say"), the Hammond M3 organ doing a nauseating swirl while you stumble around the fairgrounds trying to hold down your corn dogs and Lemon Shake-Up. Maybe a rural waltz with Cool Hand Luke-style dobro ("I Asked My Mom"). Perhaps you're in the mood for a banjofied stomp through the mosquito-thick backwoods ("Head on a String"). With instruments like a musical saw, lap steel, and bowed upright bass, Chicago's Blacks evoke dark country-beatnik moods that are nearly un-pigeonhole-able. The harmonies between Gina and Danny Black are coolly detached and sexy at the same time, as hypnotic as some subtle but weird drug. With oblique lyrics about faking out Jesus, difficult times, difficult relationships, and even more difficult emotions, this is fairly hard to figure, and about as far away from Shania Twain as Nashville is from Nairobi. Hard to figure, but compelling ... (Thursday, Mar 16, Saengerrunde Hall, midnight)