On recent albums, Dr John has touched on the Katrina disaster that destroyed his hometown New Orleans – but here it's personal, a volley of bitter buckshot at specific targets – Bush, Cheney and Halliburton – and the wider lack of concern that allowed such a disgrace to take place.
The doctor employs characteristically limber, syncopated funk grooves while vilifying the profiteers, "black gold politicians" and land-grabbers fattening themselves on human tragedy, and elsewhere using the city's traditional mournful horn stylings to commemorate the victims. The funeral oration "My People Need a Second Line" unites both strands, as he puzzles over why police now harass the mourners whose processions were once such a feature of the city's culture. It's a sterling broadside from the self-styled "samurai of the holy lost cause/ of the river and the bayou and the fishin' holes", though you should skip the front-loaded guest slots by Eric Clapton and Willie Nelson to get to the album's real meat.
Pick of the album:'Dream Warrior', 'Say Whut?', 'My People Need a Second Line'
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