Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – Now I Got Worry – Review

Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

Now I Got Worry (Matador)
by Jon Sarre

My guess is that the “worry” referred to in the title, like almost everything else associated with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, has little to do with the blues. What Spencer’s got one eye out for instead, is the day when his original core audience of Pussy Galore diehards starts pointing fingers his way for havin’ his dick too far up Mike D’s ass. The other eye is checkin’ out the hip matrix, calculatin’ how much more he needs before he wears out his welcome at the House of the Next Big Thing.

The name’s almost a contradiction, however, since the tone of this record suggests Spencer’s not worried in the least (you’ll know when he is the moment he forgoes lyrics entirely for nothing but shouts of “Yeah!” and “Blues Explosion!”). He even sounds more secure in his music than he has in the past. The crowd pleasin’ disco strings, funk riffs, and a good deal of the “Number one blues singer in the country” cheerleader-speak that colored 1994’s Orange are pretty much absent on Worry. At the same time, anyone who liked that record (as well as the three full-lengths preceding it) will catch a familiar buzz here. In other words, it’s a Blues Explosion record in the same way a Stones record is a Stones record.

As far as intentions of a blatant sell-out go, that’s up to your own criteria. Spencer’s pretty much his own animal and he always has been, so purism is a hard one to call. He adds elements he seems to like at the time, be it the hip-hop histrionics on Orange or the Keith Richardsesque slide guitar that pops up all over Now I Got Worry. Things happen here. The drums will slam and the riffs will be right on the money on one number and then everything will go to a stoned as shit slop-hell on the next. Screams open and close the album’s first track and Memphis blues great Rufus Thomas literally barks like a dog trapped in a chicken’s body on the animalistic blues rave-up “Chicken Dog” (what else would you expect it to be called?). It’s like when Spencer sings about “gettin’ down country” on “Rocketship;” you get the feelin’ he just may one of these days, but it’ll still sure as fuck be the Blues Explosion. That’s a mark of a great rock ‘n’ roll band.