R.L. Burnside: Mississippi Hill Country Blues : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Since stepping into the national spotlight in the mid-Nineties, R.L. Burnside has been translating the primordial ooze of the blues into a language easily understood by modern-day rock primitivists. That's resulted in some mighty compelling music, but, as this stunning reissue proves, Burnside is never more powerful than when he's communicating strictly on his own terms. These recordings, which date back to the early Eighties, are blessedly free of distracting bells and whistles, letting the spotlight shine starkly on the weathered spectacle of a grizzled man playing grizzled songs on a grizzled acoustic guitar. Sticking to traditionals, Burnside lets loose what seem like decades worth of backed-up emotions, moaning -- with both voice and slide guitar -- mournfully on "Lost Without Your Love" and "Greyhound Bus Station" and wailing with quittin'-time abandon on hypnotically driving numbers like "Shake 'Em on Down" and "Rollin' and Tumblin'." There's nary a second of instrumental excess on the nineteen-song set, but the intensity with which Burnside pulls notes from his six-string -- often pounding hard enough to make you think there's a tiny percussionist hidden within -- should give faux-blues flash-mongers a thing or two to think about. If ever an album merited a sticker proclaiming it "old and improved," it's this 'un. (DAVID SPRAGUE -- April 10, 2001)

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