Live Like a Hurricane

Terry Evans takes us down to the river in this -song, hour-plus live performance recorded with few or no overdubs in what seems to be an intimate club. He's in fine gutsy voice throughout, ripping into a selection of his most potent gospel-laced Southern R&B with a tight band in front of an enthusiastic audience. Even though the sound is full and professionally recorded, the near mono reproduction on the majority of the album has a disturbing lack of separation between the instruments. Regardless, Evans is animated, whooping and hollering with obvious passion and the band plays with conviction. When he tears into standards like a nearly seven-minute "Dark End of the Street" and "Just a Little Bit" (the latter with a particularly cheesy synth solo replicating the M.I.A. horns) he makes these classics his own. The extended, virtually spoken intro to "Come to the River" where Evans reminisces about his childhood years probably worked well on-stage, but it's not something you'll want to hear more than once. When the funky gospel chorus kicks in though, all is forgiven. The upbeat swamp rock of Jorge Calderon's "One Way Ticket to Memphis" is perfect for Evans' gutsy voice, but the synth horn parts are cheap and nearly sink the tune until Jesse Samsel's slide guitar solo redeems the track. Ry Cooder's rocking "Bald Head" sizzles as does the jungle Bo Diddley beat of Evans' own "Honey Boy," making this a worthy document of the vocalist's barnstorming and down-home live show.