Artist:     Elvin Bishop’s Big Fun Trio

Album:     Something Smells Funky ‘Round Here

Label:     Alligator Records

Release Date:     7.13.2018

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Elvin Bishop is a bluesman who easily slips into that “old school blues” category, a guy who has been peddling his musical wares for so long it’s hard to wake up and find something new in his playing or work. Here, with Something Smells Funky ’Round Here, he has managed to pull off the elusive trick once again. This is an album that simply soars with pleasure, ability, humor and good old back-to-back quality.

The pure pleasure roars out with every track here, a band that is clearly both comfortable and assured and having an absolute blast; successive tracks lead you by the ears, smiling and bopping, gyrating and stomping from start to finish. This is music that is needed and wonderfully executed, powerfully structured and delivered.

Of course, with Bishop at the helm this should come as no great surprise. A bluesman to his core, he consistently bucks trends and turns out polished performances that always, somehow or other, have a distinct stamp, making them simply Elvin Bishop. On this new, ten-track release, he kicks off with some fine political hubris and cynicism before turning the clock back to the golden age of US soul music with a marvellous cover of Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher, then audaciously slipping in a self-composed instrumental twelve bar blues shuffle, Stomp, a track that includes odd flashes of Bishop hollerin’ along in the background, ends on a seventh and therefore must be blues.

Anyone looking for a top quality, truly enjoyable bit of modern blues music could do no better than this. This is Elvin Bishop pretty much at his best, and that’s saying something.

—Iain Patience