Iowan Australian Blues: Jeff Lang's Prepare Me Well

Although it was released this year in Australia, Jeff Lang’s Prepare Me Well: An Introduction to Jeff Lang appeared in the U.S. and Europe in 2006. Words to describe this disc have failed me until now, because of one of the tracks, “The Road is Not Your Only Friend.” It is truly an incredible piece of guitar work, beguiling me with its beyond words intensity. Despite that, here goes my stab at reviewing Jeff Lang. . . .

Here comes Jeff Lang. He’s bringing a country picking, mountain blues, bluegrass coming out of the hollers of Iowa on “The Road is Not Your Only Friend.” This ain’t no corn-fed pork barrel story. It’s a song with a growing pace, picking intensity, whirling at jig speeds but with this dark, foreshadowing tone. If you don’t find yourself spinning around the room on the back of Lang’s guitar rhythm, then you’ve got corncobs in your ears.

Lang hails from Geelong, Victoria, Australia—not Iowa, but “The Road is Not Your Only Friend” is the best Iowa blues song this side of some of Greg Brown’s tributes to his home hills. It’s right to mention Brown since Lang’s “Molasses and Stone” has some of Brown/Bo Ramsey’s pace with its dark warmth.

Prepare Me Well is a compilation of songs from his earlier Australian releases. But the album heads out of a U.S. station on the Indian Pacific train track rhythm pulling a rock blues caboose through some country blues (“The Save”) with a vocal pacing (and percussion) like men riding the rail in the luggage car talking with clickety-clack.

Elsewhere, though, the strongest resemblance Lang has is in comparison to Martin Simpson. Tracks like “London” have Simpson’s British Isle-speckled slide blues (Lang plays an acoustic lap slide guitar here). And while that Simpson sound appears again on “Molasses and Stone” and “Whatever Makes You Happy,” Lang breaks it open on “Too Easy to Kill” with its Robert Randolph-like accelerant and a gun-toting tune to match the explosive blues of Lang’s acoustic amplified guitar.

With a deadpan, spoken lyric, Lang delivers great theological commentary with “Mr. God”—the Divine’s blues as He gets turned down at a job interview (He’s overqualified and underqualified all at the same time). Instead of falling off into kitsch where the lyrics would have been destined for email forwards only, Lang and co-writer Tim Hall find a way to shake our reality: God isn’t the kind of person we’d look for when hiring. In fact, could it be that God would only be acceptable if He looked more like the devil? Now that’s the blues!

Thanks to Jeff Lang and Telarc for the review CD.