T-Model Ford: You Better Keep Still : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

This is the second album from T-Model Ford, a likable enough seventy-seven-year-old Mississippi-blues singer-guitarist who records with a drummer namedSpam. 1997's Pee-Wee Get My Gun allowed Ford and Spam to stroll androll around, and yielded a creditable batch of backwoods grooves. But onYou Better Keep Still, Ford moves his music into a more studiedstrangeness; "If I Had Wings (Part 1)," a long piece that features only Ford'scrackly narrations and Spam's naked drumbeats, sets the smug tone of the wholecollection. The result is a cliched indie-rock version of an album by anartfully decrepit bluesman, right down to the poor production values and astandard-issue Jon Spencer-style "pop" remix. Despite moments of some charm("We Don't Understand"), You Better Keep Still isn't really about Ford;it's about how groovy his current handlers find him-not to mentionthemselves. (RS 805)

JAMES HUNTER