Larkin Poe — Bloom

Something is about to hit. You can sense the magnitude, its impending force. So much so that the air tensely vibrates, audibly buzzing. Suddenly, hard, sharp cracks on a drum trigger an immediate countdown. Impact is just seconds out. Six quick ones to be exact.

And then …

But, wait, hold on: To come to a Larkin Poe album not expecting the threat, delivery and glory of a double-barreled guitar blast would be naïve. Because you can always pinpoint the location of the band with the intriguing name (their great-great-great-great-grandfather’s name, in fact) by simply looking for the cloud of dust kicked up from the Lovell sisters’ bold, rocking mojo: Megan’s jacked-up Beard Electro-Liege lap steel and Rebecca’s jacked-up Fender or Gretsch du jour. And so—

… WHAM … “Bluephoria.”

Those enraged guitars crash on in. Rebecca begins her lyric flow about busting free from life’s low point, as 200-pound riffs start falling from the sky, their mass crushing anything beneath. And those slabs of concrete keep dropping, intermittently punctuating the song:

“Brother, I’ve been rocked by a rocky road; one time, two, three, many, amen.”

SLAM.

“My fuse is burning pretty short, sweet lord have mercy, I ain’t getting bucked off again.”

SLAM.

On goes the alternating sing-slam cycle until the chorus brings sweet release by reversing the trajectory. Attitude (“Up is all I got to go”) joins the music in now rocketing skyward, climbing up and up while escorted by the anxious buzz of that lap steel.

All that amp-roar serves the song well. And there is plenty more roar to go around. Because Larkin Poe hits hard and quick on the heels of last year’s Grammy winner for Best Contemporary Blues, Blood Harmony.

Meet this year’s contender: Bloom, their eighth studio album since debuting in 2014.

Like 2017’s Peach or 2018’s Venom & Faith, this, too, is indeed Atlanta-born, Nashville-based Larkin Poe territory—steeped in the Southern traditions of blues and rock as expressed in the exhilaration from two embroiled guitars. Keep pouring through their history, and examples of reverent homage to both genres keep popping up. You’re as likely to run across a Son House, Robert Johnson or Buddy Guy redo as you are a collaboration with ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, Elvis Costello or, just this year, Ringo Starr (his Look Up being proof).

So, when first greeted by open sky hanging atop “Mockingbird,” you know you’re in the right place even before the sisters really whip up southerly gusts from their microphones and overburdened amplifiers. Yet for as much as “Nowhere Fast” disturbs the neighbors with its hellraiser attitude and matching sonic savagery, a charmer like “You Are the River” moseys into the room, offering sunshine in an encouragingly optimistic refrain that swoops high and sets up camp in your head for the day. That’s not at all saying the walls don’t shake while assurances are given that all is going to be alright; it’s just the balance is more even-keeled.

“Pearls,” another gale-force rocker, flips the nastiest of fingers at being pushed around; “Easy Love Pt. 2” soulfully counters, gently swaying its warm affection atop a surging B3 organ while those guitars ultimately still crash and climax. Once “If God Is a Woman” is on the move, the drumbeat thumps like bouncing boulders; conversely, the lovely yet bittersweet ballad “Bloom Again” wraps vulnerability within a majestic slide solo.

In other words, Bloom strategically knows when to burn and when to cool. Well, cool at least in relative terms. That way when those soaring highs arrive, the response is, in a word: bluephoric.

Go one further and also experience ‘bluephoria’ in the flesh when Larkin Poe’s Bloom Tour sends up a plume of dust and decibels high above Asbury Park, NJ, on June 22.

Label: Tricki-Woo

Release Date: 1/24/25

Artist website: larkinpoe.com

Reviewed by Dennis Rozanski