Cedell Davis - Feel Like Doin' Something Wrong (Fat Possum)

Butter knife balanced in polio-ravaged fingers, Davis scrapes his frets with jagged fits and starts, carving out janglely ramshackle riffs in gaping, irregular intervals. The ‘alternate’ tunings of his strings initially sound faulty, but once the addled logic settles in everything seems to fit in its own off kilter way. Producer Robert Palmer astutely makes comparisons to Ornette Coleman and even more accurately John Lee Hooker in attempting to explicate Davis’ idiosyncratic style. Just like The Hook, Davis often insists on a stubborn autonomy from his band. On several of the tunes his eccentricities force drummer Walter Perkins (yes, that Perkins) to pound out simple driving beats that compound an aura of tension and menace. It’s also the sort of ‘who gives a fuck’ attitude that can infuriate and endear in equal measure. Further shoving fence-sitters off their perches, unrepentant misogyny infests many of the lyrics, which Davis belts out with the kind of rheumatic croak that comes from tar-caked lungs. In sum, the album’s title says it all & acts as a perfect precursor to its follow-up- the equally fatalistic The Horror of It All.