Get Yur Self A Copy The NEW RECORD !?3@%!!!
I Ain't Got No Home: Mann's sophomore effort and his first solo offer, this is a true rural blues album. On the album's covers, Mann makes no apparent attempt whatsoever to copy the original sound of the song; not even melody is sacrosanct, as he reinterprets songs such as The Rolling Stone's Dead Flowers and Black Sabbath's Paranoid. These are “hard times†romps and they aren't going to cheer the drowning man. Mann's raspy voice is applied over sparse instrumentation and that's it; unlike most country music heard on the radio, you won't find phony accents or digitally-compressed and corrected guitar solos. Mann's solo debut is rife with emotion but devoid of the forced sentimentality that makes many country singers so difficult to take seriously. You come away from album with a sensation that you've been on the Mann's porch, drinking warm beer and trying to get through a worried spell. The production quality is refreshingly basic; at no time do you forget you are listening to a man, singing.
At times, the album's plodding tempo and use of minor chording becomes overwhelming, and you just want him to give you something to feel good about – but it never comes. Even his gospel offerings, normally music of hope for people who need it, have a dubious and doubting quality; on the ancient tune Jesus Gonna Be Here Soon, Mann sounds none too excited about the prospect – almost apprehensive, as though he is uncertain of what the arrival of Jesus might mean for him. The album's sixth track, My Dyin' Bed, is the real gem of this recording; the agonized vocals and funeral-march cheer of the song is hypnotic. The lyrics are intended to be comforting, as the song is about Jesus preparing you to be taken home, but this is not a comfortable rendering of a fluffy gospel notion, it is a wrenching reflection on mortality. Avoid playing this around the infirm or chronically depressed; they may not survive.
David S. Lewis
Whose Gonna Teach My Children's Children, recorded with Sarah Asher