Otis Taylor – Definition Of A Circle

Otis Taylor continues to expand on his trancey blues, remaining both more traditional and more progressive than the usual roots crews. It’s not just that the drums and organ he introduced on 2005’s Below The Fold are more prominent; this whole album, while still relying on his banjo and other folksy instruments, rocks harder than any of its splendid predecessors.

Gary Moore’s searing blues-rock guitar is partly responsible. “Something In Your Back Pocket” sounds like Jimi Hendrix fronting the Velvet Underground, and this isn’t the only place I hear, almost subliminally, the ghost of Hendrix. “They Wore Blue” doesn’t sound at all like “The Wind Cries Mary” and has no thematic similarities — it’s a black northerner’s meditations on Hurricane Katrina — but somehow it certainly feels like that particular Hendrix classic.

Though Taylor has dabbled in spacey psychedelia before — Eddie Turner, his original guitarist, was also a Hendrix man — “Long Long Life” is almost totally uncharacteristic of Taylor’s earlier work. Here, pianist Hiromi Uehara and cornet player Ron Miles make like Keith Jarrett and Miles Davis in the Bitches Brew era while Taylor menacingly curses a former lover.

At the same time he’s working in all these new elements, Taylor continues to unite hypnotic, ultra-repetitive one-chord boogies with droning guitars and quicksand-like undertow (created mostly with cellos). He still plays banjo in a percussive style that emphasizes the instrument’s African origins, and sings his dark, brooding story-songs in a husky, rasping baritone that can have surprising tenderness around the edges (as on “My Name Is General Jackson”).

The furiously-strummed string instruments create a palpable air of claustrophobia, dread and panic. But it’s an undeniably beautiful air of claustrophobia, dread and panic, to say nothing of rage. Who else could pull that off?