11 Shots

Modern day blues-rock bands tend to blur into each other like cocktails on a Saturday night. As the audience revels in the familiarity of the sounds emanating from the stage with a detached tapping of the foot that occasionally veers into a slow head nod during a particularly fiery solo, the modern electric blues itself suffers the kind of pedestrian fate that's usually reserved for '50s novelty acts, trading smoky juke joints for small town gazebos on a quiet Sunday afternoon with nary a hint of protest. This is not the case for the ballsy Southeastern Michigan collective Big B and the Magic Bullets, a six-piece army of veteran Great Lakers with a penchant for power, passion, and precision that peppers their volatile, shot-glass adorned debut with enough auditory bullet holes to scare the devil back into the genre. Backed by a ferocious rhythm section, sax, harmonica and organ, bandleader/guitarist/vocalist Brian Burleson (Big B) has managed to blend the cocky, whiskey-fueled bravado of Stevie Ray Vaughan ("Be Cool,") the sleeveless, tattooed majesty of Brian Setzer ("Stunt"), and the moody elegance of David Gilmour ("About to Get Evil") into a late-night beast of a record that's full of brand new standards that dare the toe-tappers and head-nodders of the world to get up off their asses and throw down.