For his second solo album in a year -- not counting his excursion with
Black Country Communion --
Joe Bonamassa, the hardest working blues-rock guitarist of the 21st century, strikes up a bit of a smoky
Black Keys vibe, signaling that he’s not quite as devoted to the past as he may initially seem. It’s not the only trick he has up his sleeve, either. Appropriately enough for an album entitled
Dust Bowl,
Bonamassa kicks up some country dirt on this record, enlisting
John Hiatt for a duet on the songwriter’s “Tennessee Plates” and bringing
Vince Gill in to play on the lazy shuffle “Sweet Rowena.” These are accents to an album that otherwise sticks to
Bonamassa’s strong suit of blues in the vein of
Cream,
Stevie Ray, and
Gary Moore, but it’s just enough of a difference to give
Dust Bowl a distinctive flavor and suggests that the guitarist’s constant work is pushing him to synthesize his clear influences into something that is uniquely his own. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine