*** Cash Money

HALOS OF SMOKE AND FIRE

(Touch and Go)

When Mississippi musicians originally brought the blues to Chicago, they couldn't have anticipated Cash Money, a young, white, Windy City guitar-and-drums duo who mix Delta mud with ferocious guitar growls and solid groove. Although it's clear that Led Zeppelin loom large in the souls of guitarslinger/screamer John Humphrey and skin pounder Scott Giampino, the pair's love of early Sun studios recordings and Southern boogie bleeds through each track of this sophomore release. Call it sludge-a-billy, or imagine the Flat Duo Jets with more blues and less "billy."

Although they employ the same vintage tube-mike distorto-vocals as bands like the Delta 72, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and the Duo Jets, Cash Money openly disdain such comparisons; on Halos, they push out beyond the blues to incorporate violin, lap steel, and organ. The guys always bring it back to basics, however: there's Humphrey's darkly romantic vocals and acoustic guitar on "Evangeline," and then there's Giampino's "cowbell," a dead ringer for the sound of your apron-clad ma whacking your moonshine-soaked pa in the head with a frying pan -- probably like the one Cash Money use to make bacon on stage at their live shows.

-- Meredith Ochs