Tony Joe White - One Hot July - Music & Performance - CD

Widely credited as the inventor of the swamp-rock style, Tony Joe White spent most of the '80s and '90s writing songs for other artists-including Tina Turner. Naturally, he's a cult figure in France. ONE HOT JULY marks the first new material White has released Stateside in nearly a decade.

The album is a remarkable return to form, thoroughly of a piece with White's earlier recordings. If anything, JULY is even richer and more evocative. His sepulchral vocals have darkened and deepened with the years-if White sounded like a bluesman on his 1969 hit "Polk Salad Annie," he now sounds like a really scary bluesman. His guitar work remains the music's focus, with sinuous, Mark Knopfler-style finger picking layered over great, funky rhythm parts. White plays both acoustic and electric instruments, and he still gets more out of a wah-wah pedal than anybody this side of Jimi Hendrix. And he's still writing sinister-sounding, mid-tempo blues love songs ("Crack the Window Baby", "Cold Fingers"). A semi-rockabilly tribute to a beloved car ("I Want My Fleetwood Back"), the folksy, string-laden title track, and "Selena," a poignant farewell to the murdered Tejano star, make for memorable exceptions.