Willem Maker “New Moon Hand” (Fat Possum, 2009).

21st Century tortured country blues.

Willem Maker (aka Wes Doggett) lives in Turkey Heaven Mountain, East Alabama. From here he casts a baleful eye around and has come up with a powerful manifesto. With a small claim to fame in that his first band Ithaca Gin released a single produced by jay Farrar in 1994, Maker was soon sidelined by a serious illness caused by lead and mercury poisoning, the result of highly suspicious and toxic dumping of industrial effluent in his then hometown. Now recovered this is his second disc to be released on fat Possum and while it fits their southern blues template he paints from a varied palette.

The opener “Black Beach Boogie” is a sinuous acoustic shimmy with snaking lead guitar. Maker’s voice growls and roars in a primitive style. His voice is again the first thing to strike on the next song, “Rain on a Shinin’” which is more electric with fuzzed guitars vying for attention while "White Ladye’s" murky blues is not a million miles away from some of Dylan’s recent forays into songs rooted in the Mississippi mud.

Anyone fearful of this ending up as a blues boogie vehicle however would do well to address the following song, “Hex Blues.” This is like Bonnie Prince Billy meeting Tom Waits and the Waitsian comparison follows through to “Saints Weep Wine” where, accompanied only by piano, Maker growls through a song characterised by short, seemingly unconnected, sentences which are brimful of southern gothic imagery. Throughout his lyrics are short and direct but semi opaque, call them gothic biblical, Nick Cave and Will Oldham again spring to mind.

The album gets better as it plays, “Stars Fell On” is a belter of a song with slide guitar reminiscent of the Stones in their late sixties heyday. The guitar meanderings of “New Moon Hand” harks back to Jansch and Renbourne. “Lead and Mercury” builds up into a fantastic riff laden boogie with poisonous guitar lines rumbling and roaring, real heavy metal music, angry and justified, this reminds one of Tim Buckley’s take on dirty blues on Greetings From L.A. but from a much deeper well. The guitar (by Alvin Youngblood Hart) blisters and burns.

The album ends with an amazing tour de force, “Rosalie”, a tortured impression of a ghostly ramble with faint echoes of “Long Grey Veil” although there is no story here, only tortured guitar as Maker sings ” In a warm silver gown that trails the hard frozen ground For all your loves hereafter For a more kind and gentle step Through an open gate that leads you to wake and rise Out the other side that takes one life to start it over again……On your own time Rosalie by your own mind Through old hells still hangin’ in the clouds that followed you - Old hells in the clouds that followed you”

An acoustic guitar coda however gives one the impression that Maker believes in some form of redemption and hopefully, eventually, some form of peace.

Date review added:  Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Reviewer:  Paul Kerr
Reviewers Rating:
Related web link:  Turkey Heaven Mountain