Wurster
Album: Raw
Label: Black Janet
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.jimwurster.com

Considering South Florida-based Jim Wurster's musical pedigree in bands like Atomic Cowboys and Black Janet, his latest solo album Raw's "does-what-it-says-on-the-tin" aesthetic might come as a bit of a surprise. It's a determinedly stripped-down exercise in reproducing, as far as possible, the sound of Jim's live performances, with most of the tracks recorded in one or two takes and featuring just Jim, his voice, guitar, Porchboard bass and effects.

Several tracks additionally feature bass from Vinnie Fonatana, while there's one overdubbed vocal part (Daphna Rose) on a lugubrious cover of Cher's Bang Bang and some wonderfully raw, down-home live-in-the-studio backing on one track (Fred Neil's Dade County Jail) by Omine Eager, Mike Vullo and Chris DeAngelis. Just under half of the material is self-penned, and falls loosely within the "dark-Americana" stable; Jim's voice is redolent of an unholy cross between Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Doug Hoekstra and Nick Cave, with unavoidable overtones of Johnny Cash, while his deliberately unpicked, basic guitar style (and proudly dead-sounding instrument - he's not changed his strings in over three years, he says!) lends itself well to creative electronic treatment (wilful distortion, flange, phase, delay and other effects). Jim's most persuasive on numbers like the Cohenesque She Was and the twelve-bar travelogue Ojus, but rather less interesting on Loping Vampire Blues.

His choice of covers is eclectic, with a distinctly routine Riders On The Storm rubbing shoulders with a strangely logical, and somewhat successful, pairing of You Are My Sunshine and Ain't No Sunshine, a device which, incredibly, you feel that Jim is about to get away with repeating - but with an altogether darker feel - on the 11th (bonus) track, but which is unaccountably and abruptly truncated before he can start on the second song… most curious that. Considering the disparate nature of the material over its 11 tracks, Jim manages a surprising degree of coherence and musical and artistic unity here.

David Kidman