Blood Sucking Maniacs, the Allen family band, helmed by patriarch and matriarch Terry Allen and Jo Harvey Allen, spans five generations and 121 years, including (among others) their sons Bukka and Bale Allen; grandsons Kru, Sled, and Calder Allen; Panhandle Mystery Band mainstays Charlie Sexton, Lloyd Maines, and Richard Bowden, and frequent collaborator Will Sexton.
…Giving themselves the collective name Blood Sucking Maniacs, the songs are free, wild, tender, and gloriously unruly. Put all the contributions together, and we find a mash-up of heart-punch ballads, familial rib-prods, and everything in between, shifting from the sublime to the unabashedly sentimental with maximum integrity.
The name was inspired by their son Bale,…
Tag Archive: Paradise of Bachelors
A great album needs a centrepiece, and Mike Polizze‘s Around Sound has just that, a five-minute work that seems to sponge up all that we have heard so far, submerge the listener in its splendour before packing us off to experience the second half of the album. ‘Wake Up’ could not be more on point with its title if it abruptly pulled the curtains apart in the morning and plied you with coffee. It is a hazy first hit of the daybreak sun, an acoustic rising that hovers into view, gently caressing the senses before taking flight. Music can be so powerful when lyrical imagery and sonic visions work in tandem. However, the words sung here have a distant, grainy filter, as though they are a voice in your head or some invisible dream state narrator that you cannot quite pinpoint.