Poor Boy’s Soul, Burn Down (early November)
Poor Boy’s Soul bills itself as a “one man foot stomp’n band.” Its sole member’s name is Trever Jones. He’s just been arrested (not for the first time, apparently) for hopping a freight train. Yet his is not what I think of as “railroad blues”—that chugging locomotive rhythm often punctuated with harmonica. No, this album starts more in the chain-gang blues mode. “Burn Down That House” is slow and pessimistic, with a singalong chorus. “Moving to the City” is much sprightlier—is that a tambourine there? With his petulant poetry of the moment, Poor Boy’s Soul is as reminiscent of post-Expressionist European singer-songwriters like Kevin Coyne as it is of trad blues. That said, Trever Jones has certainly got his guitar slides and vocal growls down pat.