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Album Reviews

Yes they really do still make albums like this in the 21st century, Steve Wold, otherwise known as Seasick Steve released his second album, Dog House Music in 2007, his first purely solo effort, an album entitled Cheap coming out several years previously but sharing the credit with Swedish band, The Level Devils. Dog House Music was like a really old John Lee Hooker or Muddy Waters album, or maybe something even less commercial as Steve strummed his guitar and sang along, his voice sounding drowned in bourbon and occasionally a song such as Fallen Off A Rock would crash into life, literally, with the guitar no longer picking out a sorrowful blues lick but strumming wildly and the drums would smash away in the foreground played by two of his family, HJ Wold and PM Wold. Apart from that however, the entire album was played by Steve, recorded in what sounded like one take, when might have been sitting in a leaky shack by the Mississippi, almost every track given a short introduction almost as if to explain to a personal audience what the forthcoming song was about and why it was important. The album began with the very short (just over one minute) track, Yellow Dog which sounded like it had been recorded at the bottom of a well, the acoustics were so terrible. When the final track, I'm Gone had finished, there was a small gap which was followed by Steve reciting a real shaggy dog story, over five minutes, no music, just Steve rambling about being arrested and after spending six months in jail, looking for a his runaway dog which eventually ran into another sad blues song (about a dog). Not sure why anybody would want to listen more than once to this story. Even the album cover looked like it had been designed and drawn by a six year old, but that simply added to the unpolished and under produced nature of the work which was a credit not a fault. ~ Sharon Mawer, All Music Guide