*** Michael Hill's Blues Mob

NEW YORK STATE OF BLUES

(Alligator)

There's an urban hellhound right on Michael Hill's heels, and unless he plays hard as stone and sings big enough to shake the wind, it's gonna sink its fangs deep into his backside. That's how passionate his performances are on these 11 songs, nine of which he wrote or co-wrote. His guitar work is so relentlessly biting and crunchy, so speedy and unpredictable, it seems he's using his virtuosity to keep a host of blues demons at bay. You can hear them all in his songs: sexual predators, temptation, racism, poverty, and just plain bad luck. Hill's got time for joy in his restless performances as well, especially in the ballad "Never Give Up on You" and the comic "Up and Down the Stairs." If anything, he could mellow his vocals a bit more often, just to let us catch our breath. Because everything here's as flat-out as a New York minute. But with this, his third album, Hill arrives as a tough urban bluesman ready to make his mark on the music.

-- Ted Drozdowski