Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

Those jonesing for more tunes from America’s funkiest rock’n’roll poser will get their fix on these two discs that raid the vaults of recent unreleased Jon Spencer material. Xtra Acme collects 20 tracks from the Acme recording sessions that never made it onto that groovilating disc along with some great alternate mixes. While the uninspired performances on a few of the tracks explain why the songs were left off the first time, they still manage to illuminate some unheard facets of what makes this Blues Explosion tick. A good example is “Lap Dance” featuring growler Andre Williams, which would sure be a hoot live, even though this performance never breaks the kind of sweat both Spencer and Williams often muster. The collection’s highlights include the Moby-mixed rocker “Wait A Minute,” a string infused soul-fest called “Bacon,” the full-throttle guit-rawk of “Chowder” featuring the piano pounding of Money Mark and an alternate vocal take of “Blue Green Olga” that gets the Shaft treatment. The hands down winner, however, has to be the David Holmes remix of “Talk About The Blues” fired up by a gospel preacher laying down the Lord’s word.