The Colorado bluesman has made Hey Joe a theme tune and live staple. Here the song made famous by Jimi Hendrix (with whom a young Taylor jammed) becomes the centrepiece of a gaunt meditation on betrayal and murder, cast in Taylor’s customary “trance blues” mode; guitar drones shot through with lines of cornet, fiddle and banjo and fronted by his growling declamations. Talented guests help dramatise the album’s arid, wild west soundscapes; guitarist Warren Haynes psychs out, Hendrix-style, on two versions of Hey Joe, with singer Langhorne Slim playing the part of gun-toting Joe. A visceral tour de force.
