There’s a jaunty, peppy start to The Fire Next Time, with the old spiritual line about a bit less water next time around, and The Old Whiskey Show waltzes through three minutes of meditation on distillery-based philosophising, a theme that continues through Skip James’ Drunken Spree, fingerpicked and cakewalked into a jaunty bit of medicine show hokum.
Long-Haired State works heartfelt ballad territory, revisiting themes that Mattison and Olsen have been developing throughout the album, and I Just Wanna Hang Around With You, a Robert Hazard cover choogles through three minutes of punk-pop before Olsen winds things up with a warm Good Luck With Your Impossible Dream with subtle fretwork delivering an understated conclusion that may or may not be in keeping with the overall vibe that has run through everything that precedes it.
That final track is enough to point out that Olsen’s a substantial talent in his own right, and his guitar work throughout is solid (as is Dave Yoke’s) but it is, I think, inevitable that Mattison almost invariably ends up dominating the Scrapomatic landscape, and that’s not a bad thing. There’s something quite distinctive about his vocal chords, a malleable instrument with a remarkable range from a keening falsetto to a subterranean growl that can swoop effortlessly in either direction, and it’s not just range. The man manages to invoke a variety of tones and flavours that add light and shade to material that’s occasionally obtuse, veers between innocence and feverish intensity, and blends disparate elements into an inimitable gumbo that draws on the spirit of the Delta blues and to focus on timeless themes.
While Mattison will inevitably cop the kudos it wouldn’t be the same without Olsen’s contribution to a classy expanded duo carving themselves a firm niche in what looks to be a very viable market in and around the Tedeschi-Trucks axis.