John Hiatt: The Open Road (New West)

 |   |  1 min read

John Hiatt: Haulin'
John Hiatt: The Open Road (New West)

For my money John Hiatt never sounds better than when he gets a rocking band behind and sounds a little venomous or angry. The back-porch Hiatt never much appealed to me -- so this, his 19th album, suits me just fine.

With his tight little touring band and at age 57, he (mostly) writes about hitting the highway and some of the songs seem perfectly crafted for top-down driving with a strip of endless highway rolled out ahead.

Titles include Haulin', Like a Freight Train, Homeland, Movin' On, Fireball Roberts and Carry You Back Home. You get the idea? Well not quite, because titles can be deceptive and this isn't flat-tack trucker rock by any means.

The mood cuts back for the chiming guitar of Go Down Swingin'; Like a Freight Train is a slow Elvis-echoed blues; My Baby is in a dirty John Lee Hooker style; and Homeland has a Tex-Mex country twang, a conscience about Native Americans as the original inhabitants and a tune that you'll recognise instantly from somewhere.

Movin' On is a soulful blues over razor-sharp guitar and Fireball Roberts is actually a moody bluesy ballad. And it goes out with a yearning wish to return home.

So there is as much blues and balladry here as there is highway ridin' soundtrack.

But with Hiatt's anxious and tight vocal style, and that whip-crack band, this has a latent energy everywhere -- except when he really lets it off the leash. At that point you wind the window down and push the accelerator just that little bit harder too. 

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Music at Elsewhere articles index

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis: Carnage (Goliath/digital outlets)

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis: Carnage (Goliath/digital outlets)

Nick Cave may have alienated some with trenchant comments about the call for a cultural boycott of Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Among other things, he called it... > Read more

Various Artists: Deutsche Elektronische Musik 2 (Soul Jazz/Southbound)

Various Artists: Deutsche Elektronische Musik 2 (Soul Jazz/Southbound)

Following a previous, generously inclusive double CD collection of Seventies/Eighties German electronic music comes this compilation in an equally unimaginative and horrible cover. It ticks... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

A FORT OF NINE TOWERS by QAIS AKBAR OMAR

A FORT OF NINE TOWERS by QAIS AKBAR OMAR

In an age when shaky images from phone cameras and newspaper reports cite Facebook comments or tweets as a substitute for news – that famous “first draft of history” as it was... > Read more

THE DREAM GOES ON: Bob Marley's enduring influence, in jazz and elsewhere

THE DREAM GOES ON: Bob Marley's enduring influence, in jazz and elsewhere

Twenty years after the death of its high priest, reggae still informed the vocabulary of music. Reggae had so thoroughly infiltrated pop, rock, hip hop and electronica, we hardly noticed it any... > Read more