Eric Andersen has never been one for standing still. His restless travels from continent to continent, from innocence to experience, have shaped his songs into cinematic vignettes of troubled love and existential unease simmering in a dark and haunting blend of folk, blues, jazz and other roots music.
For the first-ever live album in his career, which encompasses more than forty years and over two dozen albums, singer-songwriter Eric Andersen chose to enlist a Norwegian blues band to help shake off the "acoustic troubadour" tag he outgrew long ago and to give his songs "a new, different kind of edge." "Blue Rain," recorded at an Oslo club in June 2006, focuses mostly on Andersen compositions dating back to the title song of his 1972 masterwork, "Blue River," presented in elegantly brooding electric arrangements.
Andersen is hardly a blues novice. He's covered or written blues songs as far back as his first album in 1965, and half of his 2000 CD, "You Can't Relive the Past," was recorded with hardcore North Mississippi bluesmen. But he's wise enough to avoid contorting his material on "Blue Rain" into standard 12-bar format - he takes care of the genre's traditions with a raucous rendition of Jimmy Reed's "Shame, Shame, Shame," and a slow-burning take on "Losing Hand," first popularized by Ray Charles.
Eric's own songs, and the version of Fred Neil's "The Other Side of This Life" that opens the CD, are hypnotically well-served by Andersen's gruff but sensuous baritone, the hovering tremolo of his electric guitar, and the support of three-fourths of Norway's Spoonful of Blues band. Despite only one previous performance and a few rehearsals together, Andersen and the Spoonful musicians fit together seamlessly - the noir-ish intimacy and ache of songs like "The Blues Keep Falling Like the Rain," "Trouble in Paris" and "Sheila" are retained and enhanced by Morten Omlid's alternately spiky and coiling guitar and the unobtrusive push of the rhythm section. The volume climbs on the torrid "Runaway" and the muscular, seething take on "You Can't Relive the Past" (a Lou Reed co-write) that closes the CD, and Andersen, Omlid and guest Scandinavian bluesman Vidar Busk all contribute stinging guitar solos to "Losing Hand." Andersen varies the mood by playing piano on two tracks, including "Don't It Make You Wanna Sing the Blues," a previously unrecorded original ballad.
"Blue Rain" proves conclusively that there's more than one way to sing the blues - Andersen himself describes the CD as "bluesy folk-soul," which perfectly captures its essence.
