Unless you count "sounding more grizzled" as a major innovation, aging bluesmen rarely engage in the kind of sonic reinvention regularly employed by musicians whose careers stretch beyond three decades. Sure, revered figures like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf freshened up their arrangements by assembling super-group backing bands composed of hero-worshiping white rockers, but the musical tone itself rarely strayed from that what brung those guys to the dance in the first place (aside perhaps from rocking a bit more).
In contrast, we have the restless Buddy Guy and his Sweet Tea album, which applies the bottom-register noise-making of late period Tom Waits to electrified Chicago blues. Track one, "Done Got Old", is an anti-intro, strategically lowering expectations; Guy admits in a rattling whisper, accompanied meekly by an acoustic guitar, that he's irrelevant, priming the listener for an hour of music by a man who says upfront that he can't play and sing like he used to.
Following immediately, though, is "Baby Please Don't Leave Me", a song that sounds like what might have happened if the invention of music—the primal ur-composition of modern humans, made with cave granite and pieces of burnt wood—found its way over to an amplifier and plugged in. Deliberate, forceful drumming is joined by a grinding bass, stopping by on its way home from job as a dredge on the midnight shift. The guitar follows, loud, wide and trending flat as if reaching toward the bottom, and then comes the unmistakable and undiminished wail of Buddy Guy urging his baby not to leave. A standard blues complaint, but this time chained to huge, filthy, soot-flinging machines and dragged, scraping industrial muck across a concrete floor.
This goes on for seven minutes without wasting a second. No, Buddy Guy can't sing and play like he used to. He's acquired far too much awesome.
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