Left Lane Cruiser: Dirty Spliff Blues Review

Dirty Spliff Blues is the eighth album from Left Lane Cruiser, a blues rock outfit from Fort Wayne, Indiana. True to the album’s gungy name,“Tres Borrachos” spares no ear as the kick-in-the-ass, kick starting track with a dirty ZZ Top-style that is heavily distorted and well-supported by a fuzzy, driving riff. “Elephant Stomp” features a crawling, finger-picked rhythm that alternates dissonantly between crunch and clarity, demonstrating the track’s variety of sound.

The thesis of the album is continued in the song “Whitebread N’ Beans:” heavy effects affect heavy sound; this track features the first instance of the badass borracho breakdown that will remind classic rock fans of the fuzzy, chord-heavy Foghat track “I Just Want to Make Love to You.” The next track, “Tangled Up in Bush,” with its sultry, honky-tonk lead-in serves as a suggestive wink-of-the-eye to the listener as it describes a carousing scene of flirtation and debauchery a la Mötley Crüe. Calling to mind the defining riff from Stone Temple Pilots’ “Vasoline,” the track “Heavy Honey” uses alternate picking to create a deep, viscous sound that thematically follows the example set by “Tangled Up in Bush,” weaving a sun-soaked tale of American passion.

The album’s titular track is a weed-smoking, string-stroking jammer that brings back the waning guitar to support a percussion-laden head-nod to the head shop, implying to the listener that “we like our rock & roll like we like our kush: fresh and potent.” “Cutting Trees” continues the herbaceous trend with its pick-scraping grind and liberal wah-wah induced string stress and “All Damn Day” is a head-banging, bed-wracking enforcer of a track with an emphatic, stuttering riff that drowns the listener in a miasma of the chronic and symphonic.

“Skateboard Blues” is the purest blues rocker on this album with its impressive, insistent guitar; containing the only obvious solo, this is a scotch-soaked, barroom bruiser: a Johnnie Walker jukebox rocker. The concluding track “She Don’t Care” with its fierce, understated rhythm and entropic coda serves as a fitting, cacophonous conclusion to an album of tequila-twisted tunes.

The Review: 7.5/10

Can’t Miss Tracks

– Tres Borrachos
– Tangled Up in Bush
– Heavy Honey
– Skateboard Blues

The Big Hit

– Heavy Honey

Review by McKinnie Sizemore

Buy the album: Amazon