If you’ve been following our occasional checkup chats, which you totally should be, you probably already know that local guitarist Eli Cook maintains roughly equivalent levels of enthusiasm for acoustic early proto-blues (see 2005’s Miss Blues’es Child), 90’s Seattle grunge (2007’s not-particularly-traditional alt-rock record Electricholyfirewater, and New Orleans R&B (the latest incarnation of his power trio). With the record released here, Static In The Blood, we get another angle: the singer-songwriter. Cook spent two years cooking up these seventeen tracks alone, playing almost all the instruments himself, and says they’re bluesy, but not actually blues per se.

Paradoxically, this will probably continue to make him even less marketable to those rare purists looking for someone they can call a blues guitarist without needing a footnote, but those people should put a sock in it anyway (as should you, if you’re thinking of complaining about spending your Saturday night up on Route 29 — this is definitely the Rivals show to catch).

Book Of Job opens, followed by sets by Eli both as a soloist and with the trio.

Eli Cook - Static In The Blood