Herald Nix "Everybody Loves You" (Northern Electric 2007)

Surely midnight deals at crossroads must have gone on? How else could this happen?

Quite how Herald Nix manages to come from western Canada is a mystery, one can only imagine that he must have had more than one midnight rendezvous at some dusty crossroads in the deep south, and traded soul, limbs and several major organs, to be able to play and sing like this. This really is a terrific record. He thumps out these country blues songs with such fearless zest and fire its like being transformed to another time and place. It would be a cliché to say that place is a 50s southern juke joint, that’s not quite the point, the time and place he seems to create probably never existed, he’s rather like M.Ward in that respect. Also like M. Ward, his guitar playing is highly skilled, but never sounds academic or overly scholarly, which can be a fault at this level of virtuosity. He follows more of a blues idiom than M. Ward though, with plenty of rusty knife slide, and the occasional eastern influence, comparisons could comfortably be made to the sadly departed Chris Whitley and Rainer Ptacek.

There’s an aspect of Nix’s guitar style that adds a tension and rhythm, even when he’s solo he somehow manages to get a percussive whack into his playing so there is always a driving beat, a rebellious gripping sound, like on RL Burnside’s live version of ‘Miss Maybelle’, so even before you notice anything about the lyrics, the song has grabbed you by the throat and drawn you in. As well as blues, there’s some old rock’n’rollers that have an influence, ‘Gonna Be A Playboy’ has the feel of the darker, evil brother of Hank Mizell’s ‘Jungle Rock’, and several times during the record you are thinking Scotty Moore or Eddie Cochran, couple that with some Howlin’ Wolf and you’ll get the idea.

Not everything is quite so retro, ‘Nobody’s Laughing Now’ verges on modern alt.country, Nix put’s a hitherto unrevealed sweetness in his voice, but the guitar still has a menace and a roughness to it. ‘Night’s Black Ridge’ has a repeated, building, mantra-like riff that could have come from almost any time in the last 40 years (it’s actually quite similar to Sleater-Kinney’s fabulous ‘Heart Factory’!), when the riff breaks out into a solo it’s a thrilling, spine tingling spell of playing. ‘I See Someone Coming’ is less dangerous, and folkier in style, not a million miles from John Martyn, it also includes the appearance of the inevitable red dress, that’s not the only blues cliché on the record. Opening track ‘Outside The Death House’ does string a few such clichés together, but in ample compensation, has a brilliant pounding, swirling riff like you’d imagine Canned Heat would have played, but never did. The closing track has some slow Ry Cooder like playing, only to be deflated by the singing of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ over the top! That’s the only song and the record that doesn’t quite thrill.

An excellent record (and one that benefits from ear bleeding volume!). If a live show matches the intensity and power of the performances on this collection of songs, it would be spectacularly good.

Date review added:  Sunday, January 13, 2008
Reviewer:  Patrick Wilkins
Reviewers Rating:
Related web link:  www.myspace.com/heraldnix