Ray Wylie Hubbard | Texas Music Magazine

Album:

A. Enlightenment, B. Endarkenment (Hint: There Is No C)

Record Label:

Bordello

By:

Richard Skanse

Don’t judge Ray Wylie Hubbard’s latest by either its wicked cover or its too-clever-and-cumbersome-for-its-own-good title: it’s what’s under that delightfully perplexing surface that counts. And with due respect to the many fine albums he’s made in the last 20 years, this is Hubbard’s masterwork. Gurf Morlix, Hubbard’s chief co-conspirator since 2001’s Eternal and Lowdown, makes a couple of cameo appearances, but Hubbard and bassist George Reiff handle the production this time, and the results sound like Hubbard slowly rising from a decade-long romp in the swamp. There’s still plenty of grit and grime in the grooves cut by Hubbard’s resonator slide and Rick Richards’ primal, minimalist drumming, but just enough mud has been knocked away to reveal flashes of light — like the clarion ring of Kevin Russell’s “Battle of Evermore”-style mandolin on the title track and the soaring organ (courtesy Bukka Allen) that lends “Loose” an air of Exile on Main Street majesty. And though Hubbard still loves a molasses-slow crawl more than any Texan since DJ Screw (“Wasp’s Nest,” “Tornado Ripe,” “Opium”), not to mention creat- ing a pronounced sense of cackling doom in his lyrics, A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment more than lives up to the first part of its title when it gets down to making a calamitous racket just for the sheer joy of making a calamitous racket. Throw open the windows, crank up stompers like “Down Home Country Blues,” “Whoop and Hollar” and especially “Pots and Pans,” and dance like it’s last call on Judgment Day.