Reissue: Terry Allen & The Panhandle Mystery Band – Bloodlines

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Bloodlines originally came out in the US on Fate Records in June 1983, with the UK not even seeing a release until a couple of years later. It did receive a couple of low-key 1990s CD re-issues, one of which doubled up with the ‘Smokin The Dummy’ album (also reissued and reviewed here), but it has been largely allowed to disappear from view ever since. As such, this is a timely re-issue of an album that saw Terry Allen and his raggle-taggle band stretching out their musical evolutions. Having previously established themselves as an alt-country proposition in a world where that genre had not really begun to exist, by this time, Allen was pulling his inspiration from other modes of theatre and music where he also had a variety of interests.

Terry Allen and the band begin to punch their way out of any genre-based categorization and allow a wide range of differing inspirations to seep in through the gaps. In no way should that imply that this is a tougher album to enjoy; in fact, ‘Gimme A Ride To Heaven Boy’ is one of Allen’s best-known songs, one of those songs that sounds so much like a hit that you imagine there is a parallel universe somewhere where it is exactly that.

On the song ‘Ourland’, you can hear a pure folk breeze drifting in, especially tangible thanks to the fiddle playing of Richard Bowden and penny whistle from Jack Bowden. ‘Manhattan Bluebird’ begins with the piano leading the way and really hangs its hat around the strength of the beautiful melody, something that still remains the centrepiece even when the saxophone enters the mix, but that little jazzy flourish at the end does display the musical open-mindedness at the heart of this bands work.

‘Cantina Carlotta’ and ‘There Oughta Be A Law Against Sunny Southern California’ are two songs that appeared on Allen’s 1975 debut LP ‘Juarez’, but the latter of the two especially is such a loud statement of humanist rage that it is easy to see why Allen was tempted to give it a further push in 1983. In his takedown of racist, gun-toting, on-the-road hedonism, he sings, “I leave a few people dead, but I got open road ahead yeah” before robbing a liquor store, leaving everyone on the floor. The final verse sums it up succinctly, “there oughta be a law against putting the devil behind the wheel.” Allen’s partner Jo Harvey Allen had written a one-woman play ‘Hally Lou’ for which Terry composed the theme song ‘Oh Hally Lou.’ That song features here too, and again, the melodic element to his composition is really at the forefront with a piece tailor-made for a theatrical setting. As for the title track, which opens the album and then reprises for the close (a further example of how Allen was thinking in terms of a structured, dramatic presentation for his songs), it is such a powerful meditative hymn that you can easily understand Lucinda Williams covering it years later. What this very respectful re-issue of ‘Bloodlines’ testifies, in tandem with the re-issue of ‘Smokin The Dummy,’ is that having established himself as a maverick country outsider in the seventies, Terry Allen began the eighties on a creative roll that will hopefully now elevate into some, richly deserved, stronger appreciation among country fans and record collectors far and wide.

Order Bloodlines via Paradise of Bachelors | Bandcamp