#shove

The new crew hails from the Bobby Lees, a Woodstock-based trio known for its raw-boned and riffy take on rock and punk. Spencer has been working with the Bobby Lees’ Kendall Wind (bass) and Spider Bowman (drums) since the 2024 EP Sick of Being Sick, and before that, he produced their album Skin Suit. The Bobby Lees spit more punk and less blues than the old team, Judah Bauer and Russell Simins.  On the Spencer-produced Skin Suit, Wind snarls like Amyl (of the Sniffers) and bleats like the Nightingales Robert Lloyd.

But all that hasn’t changed the Jon Spencer experience all that much. Songs like “Step on the Gas” lumber through mighty swathes of guitar, then dance like dragonflies in sticks on rims. Spencer, as always, commands most of the spotlight, beckoning and insinuating and pushing you back with a straight arm. “How can you live with all that hate?” he asks mid-song in his twisted preacher cadence, then rallies the choir for a refrain of “Step on the gas!” “Orange Slice Blues” falls so close to prime 1990s Blues Explosion’s sound that I wonder if it’s a cover, and Wind holds down that pendulum-swinging bassline with disarming aplomb.

Spencer hasn’t done a Heavy Trash record in a while, but he’s still got a taste for demented rockabilly, as demonstrated by the dippy sway of “Mr. Lion.” No one ever accused the Bobby Lees of leaning country, but they do just fine here, kicking up a roadhouse swing and even meowing like cats, as Spencer narrates an unlikely, animal-centered story.

The weird psychedelic side of Jon Spencer, too, is fully accounted for, especially in the closer “No More” where the rocker enumerates modern life’s detritus as it blinks out around him. “No more med checks, no more bed checks, no more birthday checks, no more birthdays,” he intones. “More Yankees, no more Celtics, no more Olympics.” It’s not clear why we’re giving up dress shirts and dress socks and ties—whether Spencer is contemplating his personal end or a broader planetary collapse. It’s also uncertain whether Spencer is happy or sad or just perplexed by it. But the song, and the album, end on an existential note. “All of this stuff, meaningless now, what was it all for? What was it all for? And what are we left?” asks Spencer. Well for one thing, even now when we don’t have a Blues Explosion, we still have Jon Spencer, sounding very much like himself, and that’s something.