Mule - Mule

Year: 1993

Label: Quarterstick

By request, but also in my cue of things to post, so the synchronicity was just too perfect.

If you grabbed the Mule post from earlier, you got their second album, which is really good, but for my money, this one is really great. 

For starters, on this, their debut, they have the rhythm section of the Laughing Hyenas backing up P-Bone, nee P.W. Long nee Preston Cleveland, creating a bluesy bluster that's all southern gothic and Detroit dirty. I remember being in school when a dude from Michigan was trying to turn me on to this record as "friends from back home". For the first few listens, I was actually offended that this band was trying so hard to sound Southern (as a proud gentleman of the Confederacy myself), right down to the affectation on the vocals. Well, turns out vocalist P-Bone is (if you believe the hype) from Tennessee, which, I suppose, counts as the South. Once I got that fact, I was able to truly enjoy this record. All the loud, gritty, ugly, blues-soaked nastiness of it.

Trivia: John Brannon of Negative Approach/Laughing Hyenas was in the earliest version of this band, and Preston Cleveland is a blood relative on Mr. Brannon.

* Re-up'd 10.08.09

DL