Kimbrough, Junior - Most Things Haven't Worked Out - New LP

Repress of Kimbrough's final vinyl, recorded at Lunati Farms in Holly Springs, Mississippi, and Kimbrough's Juke Joint in Chulahoma, Mississippi.  While I mostly love the description below, this idea that there was anything odd, strange or ugly about Kimbrough and his music...it's not that his music is strange or odd...the world and the world of music is odd and strange and ugly...if Kimbrough's music gets ugly, that's a compliment to me, what makes it beautiful, and when it come to strange and odd, Kimbrough to me sounds like the only fuckin normal thing I've heard all this live long day. His music is not odd: it is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. -- winch

   

"the sound here is absolutely raw; aside from the ugly drum tone in "Everywhere I Go," it's a perfect evocation of live performance. Indeed, half the fascination in Kimbrough's works are the strange harmonics, "off" notes, and just sheer noise that gives a murky depth to his repetitive looping around a song's tonic note. Even the lyrics are often buried beneath layers of blues grunge, but it hardly matters -- the whole album qualifies as a liminal, half-waking Mississippi dream. Highlights include the hypnotic "I'm in Love," and the stomping "Burn in Hell," which Kimbrough introduces by ribbing a bandmate: "If I die before you, I go before you, I'm gonna be there to open the door -- come on in, brother!" With less than a year left to live, Kimbrough could still laugh at eternity." -- Paul Collins