Music Worth Buying Blog: Year of the Blues - No Better Than This Review
Music Worth Buying By Robert Kinsler
For most of August, No Better Than This has been just that in my musical world. John Mellencamp’s latest album boasts 13 songs recorded in a mere 13 days, but is a masterpiece and has received loads of play in my car stereo, at home and in the office. Produced by T Bone Burnett, the Rounder Records release was recorded in three historic locations in the South: Savannah’s First African Baptist Church, Sun Studio in Memphis (used by Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley in the 1950s) and Room 414 of San Antonio’s Gunter Hotel where Robert Johnson recorded seminal blues tracks in the 1930s. The mix of folk and blues with tinges of gospel and country is magical, especially on the infectious “Save Some Time to Dream,” gentle “Thinking About You” and probing “No One Cares About Me.”
For most of August, No Better Than This has been just that in my musical world. John Mellencamp’s latest album boasts 13 songs recorded in a mere 13 days, but is a masterpiece and has received loads of play in my car stereo, at home and in the office. Produced by T Bone Burnett, the Rounder Records release was recorded in three historic locations in the South: Savannah’s First African Baptist Church, Sun Studio in Memphis (used by Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley in the 1950s) and Room 414 of San Antonio’s Gunter Hotel where Robert Johnson recorded seminal blues tracks in the 1930s. The mix of folk and blues with tinges of gospel and country is magical, especially on the infectious “Save Some Time to Dream,” gentle “Thinking About You” and probing “No One Cares About Me.”