Austin’s R&B/soul rocker Black Joe Lewis claws his way into the nastier parts of the late '60s on his most recent Electric Slave album, which comes off like one of those killer Bo Diddley albums with songs like “Bad Trip” and “Elephant Man” and cover art of Bo destroying entire cities. Opener “Skulldiggin’” is that exact vibe—smothering fuzz, reverb and distant screams—and the rest of Slave takes a ride from raw (“Young Girls,” a Bunker Hill-style freakout about the opposite of Andre Williams’ “Jail Bait”) to almost refined, like the precision funky-punk workout “Come to My Party.” While there’s a lot of testing new directions on this album, the slow ones still get heavy and the fast ones still get crazy—nice to see Black Joe’s still got it!
Thu., Oct. 9, 8 p.m., 2014
