The title "Spirit of the Blues" is not misleading, but it may be perceived as such. The key word here is "spirit" and so if you're a blues purist who insists on 12-bar progressions and what not, then forget it. This 17-track compilation album of Japanese artists is a chaotic mess and all the better for it.
Most of the tracks are "covers," though many have been given such dramatic overhauls that they can stand on their own. There are three songs of godlike genius here. The Holy Trinity is: 1) Tsuki No Wa's quivering falsetto vocal with its bent pitches and some crazy slide guitar with what seems like a constipated parrot being dragged along the fretboard gives Sam Greene's "I Ain't Got Long" a frailty that matches the original. 2) Bossston Cruising Mania deconstruct Robert Johnson's "Kindhearted Woman Blues" with eerie effects giving way to a bunch of basic guitar riffs that unite into a relentless groove while the singer howls wild indecipherable lyrics in the background like a roadkill in its last moments. 3) Ahh! Folly Jet's "I'm a King Bee" kicks off with the buzzing of an insect and heavy boots walking down a wooden corridor that then become the beat of the song, with the lyrics drawled like Tom Waits after washing down a box of valium with a pint of whiskey.
There's no real duds on the album, but bands like Gasoline ("Start'n Up," an original song), Mabo & the 88 (Louis Jordan's "Saturday Night Fish Fry"), The Neatbeats (Yardbirds' "Good Morning Little School Girl") and DMBQ (CeDell Davis' "Baby, I Love You So") play pretty straight rock 'n' roll and are subsequently overshadowed by the more experimental stuff. And much of this is extremely challenging: Kubikarizoku make their recording debut with a haunting original ballad shuffling between blues and enka while Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her's take on Bo Diddley's "The Great Grand Father" might sound like ultra lo-fi drivel at first, but after repeated listens you begin to admire how they've ripped apart an original and pieced it together delicately. You expect the song to fall apart at any moment, but it hangs on, naked and beautiful. This purity is what the blues is all about. It all started about 100 years back with black Americans taking comfort in making music, improvised on cheap intruments, that helped them exorcize the depression they suffered in a cruel racist society. And this is why this album works: It imparts this crucial experimental spirit and it does it in style. So if you got the blues, baby, then this is a disc that'll ease your pain.