The inside cover of this album lists the guitars employed in its making—a 1950 Tonemaster, a 1928 National, an 1897 Bruno—the names and years that make a fetishist curse his parched bank accounts. Yet, unless directed by expert hands, these names can go to waste as easily as any pawn shop Squire. Luckily for those guitars, Spencer Bohren has great, great hands.
Blackwater Music employs Bohren’s full arsenal. On solo tracks or accompanied by one or two other musicians, he revels in the resulting space to demonstrate his ever-deepening mastery over his instrument.
Check out “It’s Gonna Take a Miracle,” a desperate letter to a desperate nation. “We can keep the wheels rollin’, keep the lights on at night / but the big money boys, they’ve got it locked down tight / but they’ve run out of time / uphill, against the wind / we’ve done it before, and we can do it again.” Bohren remains an optimist, but the creeping shadows play well with his lap steel.
At times, the gulf between the lacquered smoothness of his rhyme schemes and the bluesy fuzz of his guitar grows a little too wide, as on “Bad Luck Bone” and the title track. With “Take Me to Rampart Street,” he contributes another location-specific jingle to the city’s pantheon, but what does Rampart Street mean today?
Oddly enough, “Your Love,” is one of the most satisfying songs. Accompanied by his son Andre on piano, Bohren is a nightlife veteran, a repentant fool, an earnest partner—nothing odd about that—but on this one track, Bohren never picks up a guitar.
