For those who've followed Simon Joyner's illustrious career as an outsider and underground figure relentlessly looking into the dark side of everything -- not for its own sake but for what it has to teach -- Skeleton Blues will be a surprise. Recorded with his working band the Fallen Men, Joyner's made his first honest-to-the-roaming-ghosts-of-all-things-that-matter rock roll record. Those hoping for another of his quiet, sparse, introspective recordings need not fear, though they will be shocked. The set opens with Open Window Blues, and what you hear is a younger Bob Dylan, still hungry, still trying to wrestle with his shadowy angel (muse), fronting a group as direct and no-nonsense as the Velvet Underground (circa Doug Yule) or the early Television; the Band's wondrous ambiguity and sense of history would have been ripped apart by these songs. Guitarists Dale Hawkins' and Alex McManus' interplay is both meaty and spooky. It feels like they don't work with the songs so much as set them apart and try to explode every last word, and they come close to exploding in reaction to: "But my smokestack eyes withholding rain, oppose/Another burning wheat field full of crows." The sung meter is just off enough to allow those wicked six strings to dig through the rhythm section and react with an open hostility, it pushes the singer and finally takes over, revealing what he's afraid to say. Think John Coltrane's Stereo Blues or Days of Wine Roses by the Dream Syndicate but more subtle.

1		Open Window Blues
2		You Don't Know Me
3		Answer Night
4		Medicine Blues
5		The Only Living Boy in Omaha
6		Epilogue in D
7		My Side of the Blues