You cannot help but love Seasick Steve. He looks like a man who has travelled all over the world and his music and lyrics are filled with the consequent maturity and perspective. The opener to this album is a track called `Diddley Bo'. It is a phenomenal track filled with driving energetic drums and a lead line played on some kind of homemade lap steel instrument. To follow this `Big Green and Yeller' swaggers and struts with a more than accomplished riff and a wonderful rock vocal. This wouldn't be out of place in the 70's and yet it feels just as timeless today. Recent single `Happy (To Have a Job)' is well placed at track three with its stripped back production, bouncy folk guitar and deep vocals. `Banjo Song' then descends further into Seasick Steve's stripped back country sounds in such a way that you can't help but smiling at the simplicity.
After this the title track starts confidently with plodding drums before Steve's vocals ring through over a sliding and twanging guitar line. This is a wonderfully honest track. To follow this `That's All' struts with more of the same confidence and a produces a growing desire in me to dance in stereotypical hill billy fashion. The sound then returns to a more stripped back state with `Just Because I Can' which is a sombre and gentle travelling song. It acts almost as a prologue to `Never Go West' which though more energetic is angry and slightly bitter. On `Dark' Steve then produces a sombre and slightly remorseful track.
Ultimately the album closes out in similar style to the way it started. `Seasick Boogie' is plodding with a wonderfully bouncy guitar line. The whole package is then held together with Steve's vocals once more growling throughout. Once Steve, Vance, Roy and Nathan have said goodbye and Steve has set up a bit of a party you are treated to a beautifully soft version of Hank William's `I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry.'
Seasick Steve is a character almost unlike any other in the music industry today and albums like this are an absolute joy to listen to filled with wonderful stories, emotion and no small slice of fun.