Hindu Love Gods - Hindu Love Gods (1990)
The instrumental three fourths of REM (O_o) featured on Warren Zevon’s (o_o) Sentimental Hygiene, a great record by any measure but one of his slickest and most heavily-produced. Maybe as a reaction to that, or maybe just because it was fun, the four let the tape roll on the last night of the session and recorded the songs you hear here. It’s a collection of covers from all over the place, done in a raw and bluesy fashion that’s heavy on fun.
The track selection is a blast of serotonin for me because they pick up on so many throughlines in American music regardless of genre.
They open with two Robert Johnson tunes, a foundation of traditional Americana. Then there’s a cover of Prince’s Raspberry Beret, a different energy but played in a similar arrangement to the earlier tracks.
Crosscut Saw, from Albert King’s signature album, comes next. It’s followed by Junco Pardner, a blues that’s famous partly because of a dub-laden cover by The Clash. Then we get two signature mid-century blues-as-rock-n-roll tunes in Muddy Waters’ Mannish Boy and Willie Dixon’s Wang Dang Doodle, played pretty much straight up to show the connection to the rest.
Just in case you thought this was nothing but a blues covers album, you then get a deep-cut southern rock banger, Georgia Satellites’ Battleship Chains (still fairly new when this was recorded), followed by the George Jones hit I’m A One Woman Man and Woody Guthrie’s Vigilante man.
It’s an album full of great song choices, and the band rips into them with aplomb.
