Colin Linden – Big Mouth

Classic Colin Linden, fans would say. On Big Mouth, the Toronto bluesman steps up to the mike, lays down fifteen tracks, and retreats. No fuss, no muss, just raw and incisive blues laced with roots-rock.

Of course, when you’ve been in the record business for 24 years, written a truckload of good songs, played guitar on 150 albums by singers ranging from Keb Mo to Lee Ann Womack, and produced 30 albums for artists including Bruce Cockburn and Sue Foley, you get good at your job.

Big Mouth dips into all the favorite old stories — love, lust, heartbreak — but with a freshness that turns their retelling into a fine art. Linden also delivers meditations on human frailty, faith, and our silliest illusions (“When you’ve got money/You don’t have to worry/About money,” he sings on the title track).

Linden also invites folks such as Lee Roy Parnell and Lucinda Williams to help out on harmony and duet vocals. Linden and Williams dueted on the 1998 Tribute To Howlin’ Wolf album, and her mad cackle at the end of “Don’t Tell Me” alone makes Big Mouth a worthwhile buy. Linden closes with Skip James’ “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues”, which he taught Chris Thomas King to play for O Brother, Where Art Thou? It’s a clean, simple version — just Linden, his acoustic guitar, and desolation.