Lincoln Durham
Album: Exodus Of The Deemed Unrighteous
Label: Droog
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.lincolndurham.com

Listening to this thundering, heavy-amped-up record it sure is hard to believe that the good Mr Durham started out as a Texas State champion fiddle player from the small town of Itasca. This, the man's second anything-like-full-length record, might well be deemed even more rough-hewn and edgy than its predecessor (2012's The Shovel vs The Howling Bones) in its sheer uncompromisingness, although I wouldn't go as far as to tag it unrighteous!

Shouty, full-throated primitivism is Lincoln's trademark, with a grizzled delivery that kindof crosses White Stripes with Creedence riffing and Beefheart rhythms. Once again, there's loads of battered, bastardised old guitars and various homemade contraptions doubling as instruments, counterpointed with driving, thudding raw backbeats from Rick Richards hitting on "the most percussive household instruments we could find", minimally produced and seemingly haphazardly thrown together but bleeding the dirtiest angst and demanding to be played loudest. Some might judge Lincoln's music all blister, gesture and no content, but they'd be missing out I say.

Lincoln gets away with a track titled Beautifully Sown, Violently Torn that kinda sums up his ethos, then follows it with a Led-Zepp-3-style number (Stupid Man) with limpid crashing acoustica; he keeps on a-chooglin' thru Rise In The River and the passionate, if morbid preachery of Strike Us Down with its phased harmonica fills (more Strictly Personal Beefheart there), then settles down to Guthrie-esque bare-bones mode for the seductive Keep On Allie before regaining the growling full-on cranked-up electric-mud for Sinner, engaging in some howlingly rustic fiddle'n'banjo banter on the manic Exodus Waltz and for a grand finale delivering the anguished, shuddering Mama in all its glory. Again, Lincoln's producer/engineer George Reiff provides some additional handclaps and kalimba, but the overall effect is of just Lincoln and Rick shut in there in a tiny studio where you can taste the dirt and sweat - and yes, internal pain - of this intense, immediate half-hour in a life. Tremendous.

David Kidman