[rating=3.50]
The title of Peter Case’s new album sounds more like a command the more you listen to it. A raucous rock and roll affair (in a mini-lp package right down to CD sleeve) Wig! is decidedly different than the generally low-key, folk-styled recordings Case has done over the last few years, but it’s no less credible.
Wig! is as long on energy as it is on execution. Beginning in a decidedly bluesy vein that continues through most of its duration, the stomping piano and wailing harp are a soundtrack to the vivid short story in the song called “Banks of the River.” A tune not at all far removed from the picturesque travelogues that comprise most of the preceding Case album Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John, it’s a companion piece to “Colors of Night,” which in all its cacophony sounds even more glorious as it follows the Byrdsy pop-rock of “The Words in Red.”
Storytelling roots Case in the folk tradition even as the pronounced rhythms in his arrangements connect him to his rock and roll sensibility. His natural swagger, most evident in his sly unself-conscious vocal delivery makes “Dig What You’re Puttin’ Down” work as a seemingly impromptu jam on blues-derived changes, proffered by coarse electric guitar (which finds its counterpart in the distorted electric piano of “Look Out”).
There is nothing forced about such performances or more personal tunes like “House Rent Jump” and “Ain’t Got No Dough”. Both of those tracks feature Case and his compatriots (drummer DJ Bonebrake from X and Memphis guitarist/pianist Ron Franklin) strutting their stuff with genuine élan, so much so you yearn to see them perform together live.
Peter Case is no more adverse to revisiting his past, as on “New Old Blue Car,” than in addressing the present, through “My Kind of Trouble” and even more so in the spare solo acoustic reading of “House Rent Party.” You don’t need to read about his recent personal travails to know this man has more than one new lease on life–hearing Wig! is enough.
