Consumer Guide Album

Robert Finley: Black Bayou [Easy Eye Sound, 2023]
This very late-breaking 70-year-old Louisiana bluesman, who I was amused as well as amazed to learn was an America's Got Talent also-ran at 65, made two predictable earlier albums with Black Keys good guy Dan Auerbach, so Auerbach's production presumably isn't decisive on this more striking one. Nor do openers called "Livin' Out a Suitcase" and "Sneakin' Around" harbinger many surprises. Grammy king Kingfish Ingram blows him away chopswise. Yet somehow he hits grooves both musical and narrative that old-timers whose appetite for blues is permanently unslaked will grab onto and hold. I was already caught up when he broke a mold with "Nobody Wants to Be Lonely," about not only visiting a friend in an old age home but swearing credibly and compassionately to come back soon, and two tracks later swears in one called "Lucky Day" to have finally met a woman he'll love for life. In pop music, that's very often an exaggeration if not a lie. But maybe not when the singer is pushing 70. A-