Lost In Loretto

Lost In Loretto may be the first LP for Javier And The Innocent Sons, but Javier Matos is anything but a novice. The Minneapolis guitarist began playing dirty, bourbon-soaked blues professionally in 1996, and though he’s recorded live albums and with various bands since (you may know Matos and The Innocent Sons—a.k.a. bassist Grant Wibben and drummer Page Burkum—by their old moniker, Hud), he’s treating this full-length as a debut of sorts.

The three menʼs shared aptitude for country, Western swing, and even rockabilly classifies them as anything but a straight blues act, and Lost In Loretto reflects that. Yet despite all that variety, the album is shaped by its blues tracks, like opener “Springtime,” a hypnotic Mississippi Hills blues drone akin to something by Junior Kimbrough or R.L. Burnside. Songs like the blistering “Just Canʼt Stay” with Cornbread Harris sitting in on piano, or “Robert Wilkins Redux,” a blissfully dirty rearrangement of one of the Memphis guitarist’s tunes, ratchet things up to a feverish hum. (“Redux” even comes with a Hammond B3 organ solo courtesy of Scott Legere.)

In the few places where Javier and the boys get bogged down a bit and the energy is broken up by a tune too different to exist in the spinal fluid of Loretto’s blues backbone, you still have to hand it to them for trying. Songs like the rockabilly throwback “Little Pony” or the well-crafted Mexican waltz “San Vicente” are impeccably put together and symptomatic of a band thatʼs been gigging constantly and changing up styles to avoid boredom. The result is an album that never becomes boring.

Javier And The Innocent Sons play Hell's Kitchen on Aug. 21.