Clutch: Strange Cousins from the West

Clutch: Strange Cousins from the West

2009


Weathermaker Music

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Motherless Child  2. Struck Down  3. 50,000 Unstoppable Watts  4. Abraham Lincoln  5. Minotaur  6. The Amazing Kreskin  7. Witchdoctor  8. Let a Poor Man Be  9. Freakonomics  10. Algo Ha Cambiado  11.  Sleestak Lightning



The album cover on this is very cool...It comes in a beautiful slipcase with a big fold out/map kind of thing, but all that pales in comparison to the little cork that keeps the CD in place...

I like that there are still people trying to keep the physical album around by means of thoughtful packaging...That's good work...

I don't spin this one much for some reason, but whenever I play it I always kind of forget how much I like it...I really, really miss the keyboard player, though...It suddenly sounds a bit empty without him and I have to readjust my ears a bit...However if I would have jumped straight from "Blast Tyrant" to this, it probably wouldn't have been so jarring...

"Struck Down" is my jam on this one...What a heavy-ass strut! Listening to it again, it's interesting to realize they've almost completely dropped any lingering vestiges of metal...It's just Southern-Flavored classic rock with extra-thick riffs at this point, and I think they've become one of the all-time greats in that category.

"50,000 Unstoppable Watts" also rocks so much...According to Neil Fallon, the "Anthrax" in question, isn't the band...

He's actually referring to the bacteria...and did you know a  Ham Radio isn't a radio made from a honey-glazed ham?

...and those yellow things aren't dials? In reality they're pieces of pineapple! Turns out the actual ham radio is some form of amateur radio or something...

(See! No pineapples!)

Back to the album..."Let a Poor Man Be" gets added to my shortlist of Clutch favorites. Greazy blues with some of the album's funniest lyrics:

"I'm gonna build a castle out of Goodyear tires,
Cinder block and busted doors, that's where I'll retire,
Gonna dig a moat, fill it up with ale,
Not much of a defense I know but the supply never fails..."

That actually sounds kind of nice right about now...Just building a fort in the middle of nowhere out of old tires...I could write my blog every morning on a piece of bark and tie it to a bird's leg and hope it makes it to y'all...

Just me and my jug with the three big X's on it...

I could hang out all day and listen to "Strange Cousins from the West" all day and I wouldn't have to worry about no nosy neighbors or pesky Sleestaks comin' 'round to tell me to turn it down...

Y'know what? Let's do that! I've read somewhere that you only live once, so let's crank up "Struck Down" by Clutch...