Ten Thousand - The Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir Album Review

The Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir

Image: link

Album Review

If like me you like yer Blues raw and rustic like Seasick Steve, then the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir is for you.

This awesome combo - there's four of them - Peter Balkwill on drums, gravel-necked singer Bob Keelaghan on guitar and pianer, Judd Palmer on banjo, slide guitar, trombone, piano, harmonica, and Vlad Sobolewski on bass, trombone, can really muster up a storm.

Thrown together in just a week before their inaugural gig, this Canadian quartet fuse exhilarating Delta blues with sharp mountain music. From Calgary (home of the 1988 Winter Olympics) Alberta Canada, these guys play their music based on pre-WW11 blues and mountain music adding their own unique twist. There's a pretty impressive start to this classic album. By their own admission, Go Back Home is in the Delta-Appalachian-country-blues-death tradition. Strumming acoustic guitar leads to cluttering percussion and thumping beat layered by bursts of harmonica. It's a great hook for the album. Equally as cluttered and slow-boogie like, the rousing The Boig is from the same style, as is the chugging Nehemiah' Misfortune with extensive banjo playing by Judd Palmer. The porch slow blues of Rainstorms In My Knees is far more measured and sophisticated, well, as sophisticated this bunch of musical ruffians can get. Moving over to the bluegrass template, the frenetic You Got It Wrong rushes by at break-neck speed. They hit the quirkier side of their repertoire with the heavy blues-gospel tinged Taking It Out, whereas Dumb It Down fuses street corner blues incorporating slide guitar overdubs, with the storming Never Be Dead taking on a jug band sound. They've also done some covers just for good measure: Sleepy John Estes's straight forward blues boogie Stop That Thing from 1935, would make a great single for breaking them in the UK. An employee at New York Central,r Eddie James 'Son' House's 1965 thumping blues romp Empire State Express is given a new lease of life.

Right at the end, they revert back to some rollicking bluegrass, for the thunderous 10,000 Years.

File under : Must, must have.

Elly Roberts