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Album: Dr John, Locked Down (Nonesuch)

Nick Coleman
Saturday 31 March 2012 16:45 BST
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The Black Keys are everywhere; a sort of itchy blue rash. And here's the Keys' Dan Auerbach producing New Orleans' hippest white man, in Nashville with the reverb turned up to 11.

The naturel sonics and jazzular inflections of recent Dr John works have been displaced by an encroaching rumble-funk penumbra which refers back to the tonality of the Doc's late-1960s "voodoo" records but does not, fundamentally, parody them. This is good.

Mac Rebennack is not a songwriter for the ages, and so how he sounds counts more for him than for the average alligator. So Voodoo Gospel, yes. But traces of 1950s New Orleans R&B abound and there is mud in the water, as well as filth in the guitars.

For once all that languorous muck is refreshing. Try playing "Ice Age" after dark and see if the earth doesn't shift a little under your feet.

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