Search - Spencer Dickinson, Jon Spencer :: Man Who Lives for Love

This collaboration between the Blues Explosion's Jon Spencer and the North Mississippi Allstars' Luther and Cody Dickinson sounds like serious voodoo, musical mud wrestling, or an accident waiting to happen--maybe all three at once. The most straightforward tracks seem to pay homage to such legendary primitives as the Stooges ("That's a Drag," "Sat Morn Cartoons," "Book of Sorrow") and the Cramps ("It's Not OK," "The Man Who Lived for Love"), but the musical interplay ultimately stretches to explore a more delirious expanse. "Flood (The Awful Truth, The Living End)" and the epic "I'm So Alone" delve to the deepest bottom of the blues, "Why?" features the organ accompaniment of co-producer/patriarch Jim Dickinson on a Memphis soul strut, and the harder-edged funk of "Cryin'" sounds like James Brown on a psychedelic bender. Then there's the folk lilt and Eastern delicacy of the instrumental "Appalachia." Recorded in 2000, the first twelve of these tracks were released only in Japan in 2001, yet the project as a whole seems to exist in a musical dimension beyond time. --Don McLeese