Ray Wylie Hubbard,
Snake Farm



Label: Sustain Records

(3½ out of 5)

In his 60th year, Ray Wylie Hubbard has the unruly look of a man who's been dragged backward through a snake farm and barely lived to tell the tale. But despite surface appearances, this one-time outlaw of the progressive country "movement" has stepped beyond his self-abusive ways and is enjoying a personal and professional renaissance.

Most recently, the regenerated Hubbard has assumed the role of mentor to and influence on a new generation of off-center Texas country rockers, which makes it all the more interesting that, in pushing to its limits the turn he took a couple of albums back, his largely self-penned new effort almost completely eschews country in favor of a style of blues so swampy that Snake Farm sounds more Louisiana black mud than Texas red dirt. Any way you roll the dice, this is a blues album that runs up against both that medium's inherent limitations and the even narrower boundaries Hubbard imposes on it.

Don't take this the wrong way: with Hubbard's growling guitar and gravelly vocals at the helm, this is technically a first rate musical outing. Snarling and sliding guitars slither their way erotically around an elastically funky and deceptively complex series of bass lines; and a simple, snappy snare driven beat holds everything together as tight as can be. But no matter which way you skin this snake, it lacks musical variety.

Hubbard does deserve kudos for escaping the claustrophobic confines of his tunes with an as-broad-as-can-be lyrical search for a variety of redemptions. The title track (listen), arguably the best piece of music here, establishes the Fall — snake/serpent, does anyone really know the difference? — and sets up an album chock full of potential paths to salvation: in "Kilowatts" (listen), the answer is in faith and work; in "The Way of the Fallen" (listen), it is in embracing that Fall; in "Old Guitar" (listen) and "Live and Die Rock and Roll" (listen), it is in music; and in "Resurrection" (listen), it is in accepting ambiguity. But Hubbard makes it quite clear that for him redemption exists in love, a point he briefly brushes against in "Rabbit" (listen) and addresses fully, openly, and heartwarmingly in "Mother Hubbard's Blues" (listen).

Snake Farm is a good album and promises better things ahead for a great musician who seemed to have left his best behind him in the mid-1970s. And perhaps there's the redemptive message for all of us.

Reviewed by Adam Black
June 29, 2006