Deliveries After Dark

Album Review

Coming off his two-volume tribute to Jimi Hendrix, Electric Chubbyland, Popa Chubby is still high on rock & roll. While his love of the blues remains strong and dominates a handful of the tracks here, Deliveries After Dark features more heavy metal thunder and hard rocking than usual. The furious "Sally Likes to Run" captures that arena rock feel with enough cowbell to keep Christopher Walken happy while the title track crunches like Deep Purple in "Highway Star" mode. The epic "Man of the Blues" should easily satisfy longtime fans with its classic Chubby sound, but "Grown Man Crying Blues" and "I'll P**s on Your Grave" sound like the blues by way of a rock band. For Chubby, it's usually the other way around, but he's often mentioned his growing up on rock before finding the blues, so don't be too surprised that he sounds ten years younger than he did on his last album. The ambitious performances, the good-timing rock songs, the searing guitar solos, and the willingness to experiment — "Woman in My Bed Dub" flirts with reggae while the "Theme from The Godfather" is done cowabunga surf style — all suggest youth and embrace freedom. With all this excitement coming across in a convincing, fist-pumping fashion, Deliveries After Dark is a very loud success. It's only a matter of how much blues the longtime Chubby fan is willing to sacrifice.