Pitchfork

You know the tale: White boys snuck away with the blues, hollowed it out with shrill teeny-bopper mania and a vaguely emergent counter-culture, and created the shiny, deltaless gleam of rock. And yet, over the past few years, there has been increased interest in the blues-- mostly from white midwesterners who were introduced to it via Jimmy Page and Keith Richards. Of these new blues fetishistis, The White Stripes are the success story and The Black Keys are riding shotgun. Another Fat Possum artist, Guy Blakeslee-- the lightning-haired hippie-throwback from Entrance-- is also helping to reform a genre that has largely been forsaken since Page and Richards were clean.

After tours with Devendra Banhart and Cat Power, Blakeslee began to make a small underground clamor in 2003 with his Honey Moan EP. That disc showed potential, but Blakeslee has quickly blossomed. Using a peculiar guitar style-- he flips a right-handed guitar and plays it with his left-- Blakeslee creates a sound with enough feverish cacophony to raise Robert Johnson from his eternal deal. His second LP as Entrance, Wandering Stranger, picks up on the gutty Leadbelly-era moans of his first, tracing the eternal welcome in age-old standards while creating novel originals steeped in the form's history.

"Rex's Blues" is the re-telling of a song by cult country-rock troubadour Townes Van Zandt. Blakeslee's straight depression-era accompaniment-- from slow guitar-picking to a moaning, despondent fiddle-- makes the track sound like a camp-fire hymn crumpled under the faded lore of histories and proclamations that "the South will rise again". His voice is a high-pitched moan/beg that aches with a sense of dusty misfortune, and is reminiscent of the husky country-folk voacls of Van Zandt contemporary Ry Cooder. As his voice gives way to a rumbling piano, Blakeslee confesses a historic allegiance to the blues but, more importantly, makes them seethe again.

On the title track, Blakeslee asks his production crew to dim the lights, setting an appropriate mood for the blistering acoustic blues jam that follows. "Wandering Stranger" begins with a simple guitar roll before gaining steam and storming through mournful tambourine hits and Elmore James production. Though it spends a bit too much time repeating its titular phrase, Blakeslee manages to hold your attention with his hypnotic guitar picking and vagabond desperation.

At times, Blakeslee mixes the experimental leanings of the Velvet Underground and Tim Buckley into his country-blues, and he does so to mesmerizing effect. "Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor" has the same sort of claustrophobic beauty heard on Starsailor or Astral Weeks. Borrowing Buckley's airy, off-key vocals and rumbling spitfire guitar strokes, Blakeslee-- frayed and torn by the sterility of modernity-- perfects the drunken torch song. "Please Be Careful in New Orleans" tracks the same dwindling night. Pulsing with release and forlorn grace, its swampy, lovelorn quality contributes as much to the blues as it borrows.

Ending with the weathered river-bent jam "Happy Trails", Blakeslee closes an album that should delight blues purists and neo-delta enthusiasts alike. His unconventional stylings meld into the time-honored necessities of repetition and stark resurgence with a grace that belies his 23 years.