The Gun Club: Mother Juno

Gun Club backbone/lead guitarist Jeffery Lee Pierce died this past March, leaving behind a legacy of Delta blues-inspired punk and a handful of inexplicably hard-to-find albums. Now, the label run by one-man universe Henry Rollins does its part by reissuing the out-of-print 1987 classic Mother Juno. The first big step from the sound the band mastered in its previous three albums, Mother Juno paired the band (including one-time Cramps/Bad Seeds guitarist Kid Congo Powers) with Cocteau Twins guitarist Robin Guthrie in the role of producer, creating a smooth, ethereal blues sound that has yet to be matched. Pierce's voice drips with pathos, and he wrings the most heart-wrenching sounds imaginable out of his guitar. Listen to "The Breaking Hands," and you'll hear a song in which the slide guitar lets the soul soar while the vocals pull you down. As long as technically proficient but uninspired wanks like Eric Clapton continue to sully the genre, the blues will never die. However, with the passing of Jeffery Lee Pierce, the evolution of the blues to the next step took a huge step back.