Death wish blues / Samantha Fish & Jesse Dayton.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In 2022, veteran guitar slingers Samantha Fish and Jesse Dayton recorded and released the Stardust Sessions, a quick, dirty covers EP, to see if they could find the magic to collaborate on something larger. Liking the end result, they reconvened at an upstate New York studio with bassist Kendall Wind, keyboardist Mickey Finn, drummer Aaron Johnston, and producer Jon Spencer. They wrote or co-wrote a dozen songs with everyone playing together in the studio live whenever possible. The originals on Death Wish Blues capture the pair's complementary styles and symbiotic energy as they careen across electric blues, garage funk, rockabilly, and punk. Fish, a fiercely independent blues futurist from Kansas City, works the road incessantly headlining festivals and clubs across the globe and has recorded more than a dozen albums. Lifelong Texan Dayton is a veteran singer/songwriter and first-call sideman who has backed legends like Cash, Jennings, and Nelson; played with the Supersuckers, Joe King Carrasco, and John Doe; issued nine solo albums; and worked with Rob Zombie scoring his films, as well as in his studio and live bands. The single "Deathwish" is the rowdy opener. A swaggering, twin-guitar blues rave-up, Fish's full-throated alto details an obsession with an irresistible creep. Dayton fronts "Down in the Mud," which commences as a blues before a jagged move to whomping, raw funk, then goes back and forth. The duo co-composed "Riders," wedding a massively funky blues vamp (à la Albert King) with twinned voices in a narrative about the traveling musician's life: money struggles, quick romances, and the endless road. "Trauma," another co-write, rumbles in with a funky vamp before the bassline and squiggly synth syncopate it. The lyric -- sung by Dayton -- is desperate and full-throated in its accusation and plea before the guitarists go at each other in complementary solos. "No Apology" is a showcase for Fish's striking voice. Melding early blue-eyed soul and girl group pop, her protagonist is heavyhearted yet unashamed of her longing and intent to possess the beloved with a slightly twisted lyric that is a trademark of Fish's love songs. Dayton's scorching blues-cum-rockabilly duet "Lover on the Side" is, in its way, a woolly, shambolic 21st century update of Billy Edd Wheeler and Jerry Leiber's country song "Jackson." "Rippin' and Runnin'" begins with an acoustic slide lick before pulsing synth, kick drum, and bassline introduce Fish's reverbed vocal grafted onto modern, electric country blues. Her lyric is loaded with double entendres about a lover who promises many things but doesn't deliver. "Dangerous People" commences with Fish framed by percussion before the band erupts in menacing swamp blues. The co-written closer "Know My Heart" is a tender, weathered midtempo country ballad with the vocalists crooning to one another. Death Wish Blues is fun, unruly, and completely balanced in its songs, sequencing, and execution. Fish and Dayton prove that there's still plenty of room to innovate on traditional genres, especially when one is willing to melt the artificial divides between them. ~ Thom Jurek