Friday, April 22, 2005

"Rough Boy"

This song never fails to raise the hairs on the back of my neck. It's a slow, stately blues, something you can wallow in, powered by an insistent drum machine, but lifted into a totally different plane by two of the most plangent, simple, tearing guitar solos I've ever heard. They say Jimi Hendrix could make a guitar cry, but when he met Billy Gibbons he must have passed the secret on. There's a moment close to the end of this song when the guitar, which has been crying for a couple of minutes already, breaks out into a jagged sob, and it just kicks the whole song into that final, ethereal plane.

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