Soledad Brothers - Live

What hath thou wrought, Jack White? In the wake of Stripe-ed success, it seems like EVERYBODY'S got the blues. Yet while Detroit's duotone twosome brought a media-ready aesthetic and a pop sensibility to the table, the Soledad Brothers are content to their rut. Their title comes from three convicted felons from the maximum-security cellblock at California's Soledad Prison, who retaliated for the murder of three black activists in the prison by killing a security guard. While the Soledad Brother's revolutionary namesake might imply an equal amount of fury on wax, the trio just fuzzes-out and gets their riff on. All... disc... long. Which isn't so bad in and of itself, but on an album that sounds recorded onto an old Edison roll, it gets to be a little much after track two. Recording qualms aside (I'm guessing they figured lo-fi taping equals authenticity, but whatever), the Bros electric blues simply doesn't go anywhere. Flashes of intrest pop up on occasion (particularly on "Teenage Heart Attack") but they are too few to save the effort as a whole. Granted, there's folks who'll dig on barely audible dirge blues that drags on and on (and ON); unless you happen to be one of them, the Soledad Brother's Live won't be making your "to buy" list any time soon. [www.soledadbrothers.com]