Description
Samantha Fish and Jesse Dayton come at rock generally from different angles — she from the blues, he from country. Nevertheless, they have a lot in common. Both pen sharply drawn songs that help them put an indelible personal stamp on blues-rock and country-rock, respectively. Both deliver those songs with a bold, unvarnished musical approach. And, oh yeah, both are pretty mean guitar slingers.
For Death Wish Blues, Fish and Dayton teamed up with producer Jon Spencer, whose own sometimes arch mashup of punk, blues, and surf was delivered with an in-your-face garage-rock aesthetic. And it’s clear from the start — with the blues-rock of the Fish-sung “Deathwish” and the Dayton-led “Down in the Mud” — that the two singers are ready to revel in some of the rawest and most hard-hitting music of their careers.
Not everything, however, is heavy in theme or music. Fish and Dayton, who co-wrote most of the 10 tracks, engage in some lighthearted dialogue on the funky “Riders” and the chugging “Lover on the Side,” while Dayton takes lead on “Supadupabad,” an obvious salute to “Superfly.” The rocking “Dangerous People,” sung by both, gets to this duo’s mutual attraction and the red-hot appeal of their no-holds-barred first album together.
