Il sesto disco degli Spin Doctors è la celebrazione di un anniversario, 20 anni dal debutto di Pocket Full of Kryptonite, attraverso l’immagine calda e piena del blues tornano a veicolare quelle canzoni, con nuove versioni e ripescando canzoni mai registrate, demos & outtakes.
“We were four guys in our twenties,” dice il batterista Aaron Comess. “Our goal was to write our own songs and make a living doing it. The blues is such a big part of our roots, but one of the reasons we came up with such a big catalogue of blues songs back then is that we’d play these downtown blues bars in New York. You were supposed to play blues covers – but we were actually playing our own songs”.
If The River Was Whiskey provoca nuove sollecitazioni in Some Other Man Instead, The Drop e la Title-track, frutto dello sconfinamento nella dimensione musicale del rock con un’infinita fluidità di forme del blues, la deliziosa ballata di Sweetest Portion (“I wrote Sweetest Portion when I was only 19. I’d run away from home, and when I got back, my friends were really upset and there was a rumour going around that I had died. So I wrote that song – and I’m not sure if I’ve ever written a better one since”).
Gioca con i clichè di una storia tragicomica, li svuota e li ricarica nella prospettiva elettro-acustica, sovradeterminando la miscela in About A Train, Ben's Looking Out The Window Blues e Traction Blues, ironizzando nell’impeto di Scotch And Water Blues, What My Love? e So Bad. Non è troppo tardi per ri(scoprire) e (ri)avvicinarsi agli Spin Doctors.