A few weeks ago, in LA, there was a show. So what, we hear you say. Except of course, no-one’s supposed to be having shows.
Video footage of it began to emerge shortly afterwards, people congregating underneath a freeway somewhere before a few hardcore bands nobody’s ever heard of, blasted away from an impromptu stage.
There was beer and other stuff for sale. Masks were noticeable, but not universal. When the cops inevitably showed up later in their choppers, fireworks were sent up to meet them; after fifteen months, no matter how stupid you know it might’ve been, watching it from 5,000 miles away felt like a contrarian thrill.
Those helicopters are also the backdrop to Danny Lee Blackwell’s life now, having moved to LA mid-pandemic from his native Texas. As the virus and desert wildfires burned unchecked around him, so the city’s army of homeless people were forced into plain sight, an unnerving tableau worsened by the authorities’ dead-eyed lack of human charity, and an escalating drug problem.
LA lived, but all things considered, there weren’t many more fucked up places in America to be, hence the risks taken just to throw the hardcore party. As the title suggests, all of this chaos and more went into the making of Outlaw R&B.
Blackwell records as Night Beats, although to all intents what was at one time a band is now just him. Going almost solo doesn’t mean being impervious to criticism though, with Outlaw R&B’s predecessor – the Dan Auerbach produced Myth Of A Man – having long-term disciples fretting about a shift away from the scuzzy garage psychedelia of their/his foundation work.
All should be forgiven here however, as with the insanity of his new home as muse he returned to the groove for lots of tuning in and dropping out.
Holing up with a box full of post-apocalyptic canned goods and some Akira Kurosawa films for instance was the inspiration for New Day (imagine Scott Walker doing gringo rock whilst hazy from bouts of rolling insomnia), while swinging opener Stuck In The Morning has some contrastingly impressive pop smarts, and Revolution is remarkably lucid for a songwriter who idolizes fellow Texan maverick Roky Erickson.
You can take the man out of the Lone Star state, but the dark country twang of Hell In Texas shows you sure can’t take it out of them, but it’s on closer Holy Roller that the cosmic vibes hit overload, the trippy space riffs and congregational multi-tracking dissolving into a Woodstockian climax that’s lacking a burning fretboard but little else.
This is not the only heirloom at work however; as a teenager Blackwell’s mother was a Bharatanatyam dancer in the sixties, and he cites influences common to music from both eastern and western hemispheres being poured into the freewheeling, organ dominated Shadow.
Meantime, back in Old Hollywood, the nightmarish vista of right now paved the way for the pounding Ticket, while the reality that escape is a meaningless term confounds it on Crypt, a screechy, primal slab of blues that offers the theory dirty old solutions still work best for fancy new problems.
Outlaw R&B is the work of a man deciding whether they’re a nomad, or as Danny Lee Blackwell explains, for people faced with either choices about whose rules to follow or those who see no grid at all. With the blades whirring above him, Night Beats has become a time machine to escape from not one reality, but all of them.
Gigs under off-ramps though are strictly optional.
