Tell-Tale Blues
I was surprised and a little saddened to hear that Terraplane is a bit of a ‘break-up’
album for Earle as he has recently split with Alison Moorer. These things
happen - so there you go - but as that relationships had inspired one of his
finest love songs, Every Part of Me,
it is an ironic factor to know, and that knowledge ignites the possible meanings
in the album's second track You’re The Best Love That I Ever Had.
Earle and the blues are hardly new musical bedfellows, and
through both his personal and musical life, they are symbiotic. What
he does bring to the performance of the blues here is authenticity in its grit and
groove, as well as a hardish rock, like The
Tennessee Kid which reminds of the rock blues of Canned Heat. This is
immediately counter-balanced on the album by the acoustic with violin blues of Ain’t Nobody’s Daddy Now which would appear to laud his new bachelorhood. But then, the next track Better Off Alone is one of those classic
outwardly positive assertions swelled from the inside with the reality of hurt. It is a beautiful and
painful blueslove song.
There are plenty of classic acoustic tracks betwixt
and between these mentioned. The album closes on a neat blues chug, King of the Blues, and Earle sings in
his signature drawl at a spoken pace, all poetry and passion in the rudimentary
beat.
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