Title: Holy Ghost Building
Artist: 77s
Lo-Fidelity Records

It seems funny now that early rock'n'roll was labeled the Devil's music when it first arrived, considering that listening to it now, one can hear the similarities and parallels to the gospel, blues and bluegrass country music from which it emerged. (And look at how both Elvis and Johnny Cash returned to the hymns they grew up with). Listening to this latest album from the Seventy Sevens, a legendary group whose history reaches back into the 'Jesus music' era reinforces the connections. They have taken old spirituals – some more obscure than others - and given them the rock treatment. That is, most of them. The music ebbs and flows between rock and country, in the manner of Lucinda Williams, Lost Dogs, Daniel Amos, and some of the Rolling Stones' music. So Stranger Won't You Change Your Sinful Ways is softly twangy, while I'll Remember You, Love, In My Prayers has all the bluesy growl of classic Stones. Even the harmonies have that classic Stones sound. (An interesting point of comparison is Alison Krauss and Union Station's typically bluegrass version of the song on their So Long, So Wrong). Part of the appeal lies in the way all the plumbing and wiring is exposed on the album (highlighting the playing). The band cut the tracks hastily, and a pleasing airiness has remained (while the numerable months' worth of tinkering with harmonies and the like hasn't swamped the freshness). The guitars, especially, set up a restless energy, not because of sheer pace, but because, as on I'll Remember You they fit and start grittily, playing off the drums and alternatively fill and leave gaps. On You're Gonna Be Sorry the slide guitar shadows the vocals like John Lee Hooker, and on I'm Working On A Building the solo sounds like the sparse hopscotching solos on Johnny Cash's earliest songs. This is delightfully classic-sounding stuff.