Something Else! Review

Over the course of the striking, stripped-down Medicine, former Detroit autoworker Solomon King returns to that moment when the blues moved inexorably away from the uplift that defined gospel music, and ultimately toward rock ‘n’ roll and then hip hop. The blues sought, at first, to define every-day concerns, but there were no easy answers. As with King’s efforts on this new project, it sought to render those things more real, to define them. That made the music, back in the days of Son House and Robert Johnson, more dangerous than danceable.

Same here. King’s title track on Medicine, a new release produced by Marvin Etzioni (Lone Justice), is a shivering fever dream, this stalking series of worries set against a halting, haunting groove. There is a looming sense of empty longing, something long unrequited. “Baby Does Me Good” takes the same basic instrumentation — guitar, bass, drums, augmented by a fuzzy echo — but goes deeper into a memorable crepuscular fear, the idea that our worst addiction, the passion for earthly love … our shared carnal desire … will ultimately bring us low. READ MORE...