Veteran Austinite Scott H. Biram’s new record is titled Nothin’ but Blood. While it’s not as unified or fulfilling as his previous album, 2011’s breakthrough Bad Ingredients, longtime fans have no reason to worry. Across either 11 (LP) or 14 (CD/digital) tracks, Nothin’ but Blood easily attains and occasionally surpasses the level of quality found on his earlier formative releases.
The records of Scott H. Biram feature built-in contradictions. To begin, he’s an often foul-mouthed disciple of the blues that disdains religion but holds an enduring fascination with mortality and the fervent strains of gospel music. And in terms of genre he’s a 1,000 miles from any kind of blues-purist standard; not only does he touch upon old-time, bluegrass, country, rockabilly, folk, and indeed those gospel elements in the formulation of his overall sound, Biram also has major punk and metal streaks running through his stuff.
His prior LP Bad Ingredients won a 2012 Independent Music Award for Best Blues Album, and this might’ve caused folks unfamiliar with his extensive discography (Nothin’ but Blood is his ninth full-length) to pigeonhole him a bit. But anybody that’s spent even a little time inspecting the guy’s work will quickly understand it’s basically impossible to tuck Biram into one category.
One could perhaps describe him as playing Cracked Americana, but even that faux-idiom misses explicating the raw edge and flare-ups of profanity integral to his work. And it should be added that Biram doesn’t really subvert form as much as he just shapes it to fit his own hairy-assed content. His blues tone is often comparable to the dense and tightly coiled attack of certain artists from Fat Possum Records’ heyday, though his penchant for tackling any chestnut that tickles his fancy at times lends him the air of a songster.
Way back in 2000 he self-issued his debut This is Kingsbury?, and since that time Biram has functioned as a one man band, a performance strategy that appreciably increases the songster aspect of his personality. It secures him as a modern exponent of the one man blues-band tradition that includes such worthies as Joe Hill Louis, Dr. Ross, Jesse Fuller, and Juke Boy Bonner, though Biram’s roughneck persona places him more squarely in the tradition of the late West Virginia rockabilly wild-man Hasil Adkins.
Biram released his first five albums on his own label Knuckle Sandwich, but in 2005 he found a home with Bloodshot Records, reissuing ’04’s Dirty Old One Man Band to a larger audience that year and following it with Graveyard Shift in ’06, Something’s Wrong / Lost Forever in ’09 and Bad Ingredients in ’11. It was an artist/label relationship that allowed a worthwhile performer making solid but modest albums to grow into a songwriter wielding flashes of excellence on an outstanding and award-winning LP.
The quality of Bad Ingredients didn’t exactly come out of nowhere, but I’ll admit that my time spent with Dirty Old One Man Band gave me very little inkling over Biram eventually putting together such an accomplished long-player. While I certainly enjoyed his ’04 effort, hearing it at length had me pegging Biram’s strong suit as the live stage (some of his early discography is sourced from gigs), and I’ll fess-up to losing track of his progress until Bad Ingredients started kicking up dust a couple years back.
The bottom line is that Nothin’ but Blood isn’t as successful as its predecessor, but it does display Biram’s continued growth as a writer as he remains tied to punk and metal, elements that up to this point have served him pretty well in carving out his own musical character. However, as his ability with a tune gets sharper these influences, at least when they register as tangents, can’t help but feel less beneficial to the grand scheme.
Nothin’ but Blood starts off well with “Slow & Easy,” a song landing securely in the realms of Texas country-folk. Highly-accomplished Biram tracks such as this one are less connected to the unkempt mania of Hasil Adkins and more in keeping with the majesty of the late Townes Van Zandt. No, his writing doesn’t attain the heights or sheer stability of quality located in Van Zandt’s distinguished work, but quite frankly very few people do.
What these Texans do share is diversity of influence. In fact, both were/are deeply impacted by the sounds of hot gospel, though Biram’s music features a far more extreme tug of war between the sacred and the profane. Though it continues nicely on that country-folk course, Nothin’ but Blood’s second track “Gotta Get to Heaven” deals openly and sincerely with matters of a spiritual nature.
And this contrasts rather drastically with the cuss-soaked cover of Lone Star blues great Mance Lipscomb’s “Alcohol Blues.” From matters of the spiritual to ruminating on the effects of bottled spirits; those unfamiliar with either Biram’s work or Lipscomb’s original might succumb to thinking of this cut as just an audacious exercise in luridly boozy misogyny. But with a few gleeful obscenities aside, the lyrics do remain quite close to Lipscomb’s in relating the tale of a highly dysfunctional and in all likelihood doomed relationship.
The story told is far from pretty, and when combined with Biram’s punk-blues guitar gnarl, his minimal drum thump and a voice somewhat reminiscent of a skid-row Jerry Lee Lewis, or maybe more appropriate in this instance Lewis’ cousin and Texas resident Mickey Gilley, with a restraining order or two in his background, it’s pretty effective.
But even better is the emotionally resonant “Never Comin’ Home,” which returns to that country-folk template and enhances it with a savvy mixture of prettiness and ache. And in addition to his talents as a writer Biram’s also developed into a very dexterous acoustic player; his solo here is terrific, mostly because he never loses track of the song’s deep feeling.
The punked-out “Only Whiskey” comes next, the distorted and gruff number providing as severe a transition as “Alcohol Blues,” but in this instance with a much slighter return. Biram’s guitar tone is impressively raw and his vocals rough and defiant, but unfortunately the song hangs in the air and never launches. While the approach obviously diverges from his one man band motif, “Only Whiskey” would’ve surely benefited from an engaged rhythm section.
The result would’ve been less distinctive (maybe), but most certainly more powerful. And Biram’s no slave to the one man concept; Bad Ingredients’ “I Want My Mojo Back” found him utilizing the services of reliably wicked sax-man Walter Daniels for one of that LP’s strongest selections. But Nothin’ but Blood wastes no time in rebounding via a unique and intense reading of the old-time warhorse “Jack of Diamonds.”
Featuring copious bottleneck slide with hints of funk and psychedelia, the blend of classic and modern sensibilities has mild affinities with the cut of Jack White’s jib. And “Nam Weed” reveals a voice nicely-fitted for commercial country aims (well, 25 years ago anyway), though Biram’s folky delivery (just vocals and acoustic here) and especially his choice of topic, specifically a man waxing nostalgic for the camaraderie (and good drugs) of his wartime service, is another matter entirely.
A cover of Willie Dixon’s “Backdoor Man” finds Biram striving for the formidable croak of the song’s inaugural interpreter Howlin’ Wolf (and furthermore possibly attempting just a hint of Wolf’s stylistic descendent Capt. Beefheart.) While not one of Nothin’ but Blood’s highpoints, it nonetheless works, mainly because Biram’s personality enhances rather than diminishes the adult-situations manifest in Dixon’s lyrical content.
But “Church Point Girls” takes a wild left turn for the metallic (though in a very consistent bluesy context); it sounds vaguely like a duo comprised of a sludge-metal guitarist and a vocalist whose two main influences are the guttural roars of the death metal brigade and the steel-wool rasp of their mutton-chopped forefather Lemmy Kilmister. A hint of that bass drum is submerged underneath, but I can’t help but again wish the rhythmic component was more overt.
A version of Doc Watson’s “I’m Troubled” finds Biram blowing some fine harmonica and cozying up to a coffeehouse folk aura with smart underpinnings of bluegrass in the solo. It goes down a charm in large part due to the artist’s general lack of politeness. And “I’m Troubled” segues into the record’s most aggressively outlandish track, the punk-metal-blues pile-up “Around the Bend.”
Beginning with a relatively innocuous flurry of picking, the nearly six minute cut unleashes a thick, chunky wall of distorted riffs and mauling solos. Of Nothin’ but Blood’s noisier rock-based pieces it works the best, mainly because it really moves, though its construction is certainly unusual; at the heaviest point it combines dual guitar lines, bass drum (always bass drum), and what sounds like wind chimes.
“Around the Bend” serves as the closer for the LP, but the CD gathers three additional gospel tunes, though two of them were already released on a Black Friday 45 that’s still available through the Bloodshot website. The exclusive CD song is a harmonica-laden and atmospheric take of “Amazing Grace” that manages to transcend cliché and bring palpable feeling to a well-worn source. The result feels necessary rather than trite.
Of the transplanted 7-inch material, “When I Die” is a sturdy Biram original and “John the Revelator” a take of the traditional (with guest vocals by Jesse Vain) that if less intense than Blind Willie Johnson’s 1930 version or the numerous a cappella versions Son House cut late in his career, still packs plenty of gusto. And along with “Amazing Grace” and “When I Die,” “John the Revelator” completes a trifecta showing that Biram’s contradictions are presented sans irony.
This importantly allows for his music to survive occasional missteps with its spirit largely intact. Ultimately lesser than Bad Ingredients, Nothin’ but Blood is still strong enough to please his devoted listenership. It’s even got enough inspired moments to create a few new fans along the way.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B
