Word: mandolines
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Stradlin and the Ju Ju Hounds make liberal use of the Hammond organ, trademark of the retro movement so popular among rock n' roll musicians today, as well as such instruments as the mandolin for a sound noticeably different from that of Guns N' Roses. The soulful, passionate rock n' roll of such tracks as "Shuffle It All" and "Come on Now Inside," the last track on the album, reveal Stradlin's move away from hard-driving bitterness and destruction that characterized his former band...
...personal essays. "Women and Blacks and Bensonhurst" meditates on Harrison's hometown, the New York suburb where Yusuf Hawkins, a Black sixteen-year-old, was shot to death in 1989 by a group of Italian-Americans who thought he was dating a local girl. Resisting what she calls the "mandolin and macaroni" depiction of Italian-American uraban life, she recalls grimly the casual racism and violence of life in Bensonhurst, and the stifling nature of community life there. "What you don't want known in Bensonhurst you don't do," she writes...
...songs range from winding country melodies to light folk numbers to blackface minstrel songs--a genre with a strange place in the history of popular American music. The arrangements of the songs vary, but are all thickly textured with instruments rarely present in popular music today such as fiddle, mandolin, banjo, "field snare" and "bones." Shocked Iyrics are clever and ironic, only sometimes focusing on traditional country and blues lyrical themes...
...Jump Jim Crow," one of the minstrel songs on the album, features a sparse arrangement of guitar and mandolin which complements Shocked's simple vocals. Towards the end of the song, Shocked signs "Zip-a-Dee-Doo Dah" in a soft, shrill voice reminiscent of early 20th century popular music. Moral and political implications of the blackface minstrelsy aside, "Jump Jim Crow" is one of the most successful songs on the album...
Unfortunately, the band often became so absorbed in their music that they seldomly raised their heads from their instruments; the two male Timminses, along with Alan Anton (bass), Jeff Bird (mandolin, harmonica), Spencer Evans (piano, clarinet, organ) and Ken Myhr (electric guitar) seemed to be playing more for the enrichment of their own souls than to win over the huge crowd before them...