Doghouse Music

Yes, they really do still make albums like this in the 21st century. Steve Wold, otherwise known as Seasick Steve, released his second album, Dog House Music in 2007, his first purely solo effort; he had previously released an album entitled Cheap several years earlier for which he shared the credit with Swedish band the Level Devils. Dog House Music is like a really old John Lee Hooker or Muddy Waters album, or maybe something even less commercial as Steve strums his guitar and sings along, his voice sounding drowned in bourbon, and occasionally a song such as "Fallen off a Rock" crashes to life, literally, with the guitar no longer picking out a sorrowful blues lick but strumming wildly and the drums smashing away in the foreground played by two members of his family, HJ Wold and PM Wold. Apart from that however, the entire album is played by Steve, recorded in what sounded like one take, when he might have been sitting in a leaky shack by the Mississippi, almost every track given a short introduction almost as if to explain to a personal audience what the forthcoming song is about and why it is important. The album begins with the very short (just over one minute) track, "Yellow Dog" which sounds like it was been recorded at the bottom of a well, the acoustics are so terrible. When the final track, "I'm Gone," finishes, there is a small gap which is followed by Steve reciting a real shaggy dog story, over five minutes long, no music, just Steve rambling about being arrested and after spending six months in jail, looking for his runaway dog; this eventually runs into another sad blues song (about a dog). Not sure why anybody would want to listen to this story more than once. Even the album cover looks like it was designed and drawn by a six-year-old, but that simply adds to the unpolished and underproduced nature of the work, which is a credit, not a fault. ~ Sharon Mawer