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How nice it is to hear a guy really strangle a guitar! When bluesman Albert Cummings grabs the guitar neck he wrenches and wrangles some serious noise out of the thing. His singing is a big, booming, raspy shout and his rhythm section is solid as a mountain, but the real story here is this guy's savage guitar playing. Modern production techniques might not be totally conducive to making a raw, gutsy-sounding Blues album. But even through the sheen of the almost-generic production, Cummings' guitar work sounds nasty and at times out of control. Like Bigfoot in a tuxedo, you can dress him up in glossy production, but you can't hide the wild animal underneath. In a blazing performance of Merle Haggard's "Workin' Man Blues," Albert Cummings' fingers set the strings afire like no one since Stevie Ray Vaughan. A couple of slow-burnin' ballads prove Cummings can lay back and play with subtle lyricism, too, but it's the up-tempo numbers where Cummings wails with a ferocity and fire sadly uncommon these days. (Ric Hickey) Grade: B+