This is The Blues Against Youth's sixth album and follows on from the excellently titled Evil Flatmates. This is Gianni Tbay's most solo of solo one-man band albums.
The album opens with the very backwoods' blues of Refugee a song for those poor souls searching for a safe place to live and the travails of being a poor discarded abused Refugee against some really cool acoustic blues picking.
The train rhythm starts up in time for Goin' To Chicago this is far more countrified than the classic version by Fenton Robbins that was on the Somebody Loan Me A Dime blues comp, this version adapts the lyrics somewhat. As the backing vocals really help to get us back to Chicago once more.
Slanted Path has a bit of a countrypolitan feel to the picked guitar over a solid riff as the tale of where you are on that Slanted Path unfolds, hopefully better parts of the path.
I'd Rather Hide Deep In The Backwoods has a real old time Jimmie Rodgers feel to it but without any yodeling thankfully.
Goin' To East Texas is a hell bound tale of the ride to some god-awful destination like he's been channeling Kansas Joe to find a way out of the Cotton fields east of Turin.
Gianni then gets a bad case of the Particle Filter Blues like he's been on the road for too long and is belching out black smoke and needs to clean those filters long before he gets to Parchment farm.
Blue Muse in the case of this album would be anyone from Pinetop Perkins to Doc Watson through to Sonny Terry to Sleep John Estes and beyond.
Devil's Train is a gospel tinged blues in the Rev Gary Davis style train ride, rather than the Stray Cats variety, it goes a bit Roger Whitaker on us with the whistled section of this Hank Williams classic.
Say Something sounds like he's playing sitting by the side of the railroad tracks as this battered and bruised blues song goes fully Rural Burnside on us.
The album closes by taking us on a trip to Oblivion a ride that involves deep rumbling vocals against the picked and strummed acoustic guitars and tambourine, as let's face it trips to Oblivion always involve some tambourine to emphasize how far gone you really are.
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