With a tone set early on by a formative, deep, dark Univox organ (with an apparent volume lever glitch, or speaker busted, possibly), vocalist Mike Phillips quickly breaks the notion of the beginning of a hip new pop record, and lead-rasps all-in, introducing the newest, dirtiest grunge-blues band in town, Tennessee Blues Mob.
Out of Murfreesboro hotspot Twin Oak Recordings, Tennessee Blues Mob released its debut album, Deep Dark Alibi, in May 2024: a wild, local hallelujah to the dirty, blues-rock state of mind we all sometimes live in.
The redeeming, gospel feel attached to the sludgy, heavy, blues-rock of Deep Dark Alibi is owed to the heavily utilized organ, over which Phillips rasp-preaches the truths and tumults of men’s hearts across a softer, as-ballad-as-it-can-be “Six Feet Under,” to the more soulful and upbeat choir-backed sound of “Climb the Mountain.”
The debut’s title track, “Deep Dark Alibi,” opens with guitar riffage steeped in the style of Tim Sult (Clutch, “Quick Death in Texas”)—penetrating tone and concise hard-rock execution—eventually becoming an awesome wrestling intro with fancy solo-birding between the lead guitars as pulsing organ chords appear behind. A roller coaster suite continues to unfold, including the arena-rock-heavy, blues-infused “Two Devils,” musically utilizing a by-then, warmed-up and growling professional wrestling-intro feel to encompass whatever wholesomeness this Blues Mob has.
The album explores themes of addiction but harbors itself lyrically somewhere between that topic and sobering intent, with enough reach across that continuum to legitimately manifest a proper testament to internal struggle in Phillips’ voice as much as in the Mob’s music. There’s fluctuating lyrics across the whole album about that kind of stuff, matched by a seasoned band able to amplify the subject matter through its instrumentation, done with a confidence and comfort that it’s not going to fly out of control at any given time. It’s a secure dredge with some sludge worth the slog, and one might even imagine Deep Dark Alibi was made for Muddy Roots Music Festival itself—Cookeville’s annual three-day field party coming up at the end of August and specializing in the deep, dark and dirty.
These guys have taken these Three Ds to the next level on this album, which packs the fervor of early Clutch through and through, with Phillips also presumably drawing from the experimentation of latter-day Tom Waits and having no trouble motoring toward Lemmy-like moments in the choruses. One after another, the six tracks signify the beginning stages of a project that should grow over the course of time, for a band that took the hardcore blues route rather than the metal one, both proper paths when it comes to the deep, dark and dirty.
Find Tennessee Blues Mob’s Deep Dark Alibi across the icons at Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple, iHeart and Pandora, as well as on their YouTube channel, Tennessee Blues Mob.
