For much of their career, the North Mississippi Allstars have strived to avoid doing the obvious blooze-rock thing. They’ve chased after new directions, whether adding studio polish on Polaris, jamming with Robert Randolph in The Word, or going semi-trad on 2005’s Electric Blue Watermelon. With Hernando (the inaugural release on their own label), they finally give in to temptation: This is every inch a retro, early ’70s, three-piece blues-rock throwback. And it’s their best album.

From the start, you’re in familiar territory. “Shake” mashes up a few of Slim Harpo’s greatest licks and throws in a big, metalized chorus. Familiar blues lyrics (including just about all of Furry Lewis’ “I Will Turn Your Money Green”) are borrowed at will; and there are obvious echoes of Cream, Hendrix (or is that Robin Trower?) and ZZ Top. The faithful approach extends to the recording. When Luther Dickinson takes an extended wah-wah solo on “Soldier,” he doesn’t overdub any rhythm guitar to fatten up the sound. Instead, Chris Chew just thumps his bass that much harder, just as he would onstage. Open space on a rock album—when was the last time you heard that?

This sort of thing isn’t as easy to do as it sounds. One false move and you’re in campy Blues Explosion territory, or into the well-meant revivalism of a Wolfmother. But the Allstars show an unerring knack for playing the right lick at the right time, and for playing it different. “Come Go with Me” opens with a Longhair riff that you’ve heard before, but never quite this greasy. What really makes the disc is its live, celebratory feel. “Mizzip” is as joyful a slice of nightclub life as you’ll hear this year, and “Blow Out” has the drive (and the brevity at 1:34) that separates a run-of-the-mill Chuck Berry homage from a killer one.

And it takes some kind of record-nerd genius to dig up one of the album’s two covers, Champion Jack Dupree’s “I’d Love to Be a Hippy.” Dupree recorded it in 1969 for the English label Blue Horizon, but it’s not a tune you’ll find on any of the standard reissues. Yet it ranks as a great lost bit of Americana, with the elder bluesman lamenting that his hair won’t grow long enough to qualify. The Allstars serve it up as a straight-ahead slow blues, with Dickinson taking the line “I’m just crazy about the way those hippies carry on” as a cue for his solo. Sounds like Jamband Nation has found its new anthem.