Living with the Law

Chris Whitley

A Distorted Roots-Rock Roar

This album appeared in 1991, as the back-to-the-roots "Americana" movement was gaining steam. It towers above just about everything else filed under that description. While most of the genre's young practitioners treated Hank Williams or Muddy Waters songs as sacred texts, Chris Whitley (1960–2005) assimilated and then torched those influences. He said he had no interest in preserving the blues—or, for that matter, keeping anything pure. He sought, instead, to connect worlds. Building on thick tangles of guitar and plaintive cries, he opened up the trove of American roots music to postpunk kids who'd yet to discover the meaning of Robert Johnson.

Living with the Law, Whitley's debut, unfolds in a sultry too-hot-to-care haze. The guitarist sings in dejected bursts and he often sounds less like a Delta bluesman than a weary farmhand trapped in the high-intensity headlights of a world he doesn't understand. Around his vocals are shimmering atmospheres from the steel-bodied guitar and carefully speared lead guitar lines, which Whitley plays with such force they rattle.

What holds this raggedy mess together are the songs, disciplined vignettes that could be chapters in an extended drifter narrative. Whitley writes in a way that shows his understanding of blues tropes, and when he climbs into his weary falsetto to tell about the trouble he has staying on the straight and narrow, you believe him. There's panic in his voice, and it doesn't belong exclusively to the blues—or to him. It's universal.

Genre: Blues, Rock
Released: 1991, Columbia
Key Tracks: "Big Sky Country," "I Forget You Every Day," "Dust Radio"
Catalog Choice: Soft Dangerous Shores
Next Stop: Daniel Lanois: Acadie
After That: Son Volt: Trace
Book Page: 858

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Comments:

#1 from tony heiderer, Boulder, colorado - 05/14/2009 6:15

For those who appreciate Chris Whitley, another artist that is well worth keeping your eye on is Rocco deLuca and the Burden. He also plays a dobro with a similar urgency and a taste for unusual textures. His new album is produced by Daniel Lanois who helped produce some of Whitley’s later albums and now, I hear, deLuca’s second album.

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