12 October 2019

On 12 October 1994, today 25 years ago JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION released
their fourth studio album LP ORANGE. A boiling collection of barbed blues crackerjacks, smoking garage crackers and some nasty psychobilly rockers. The Village Voice ranked the album #16 on their best of 1994 list while NME named it the 16th best album of that year.

AllMusic was euphoric: ” ‘Orange’ is almost entirely new sonic terrain, but it keeps the trio’s trademark sweaty, musical terrorism and hedonistic rage upfront… Drummer Russell Simins meets Spencer and Judah Bauer’s guitars with cracking snares and breaking beats, rolling
them out like staccato machine-gun fire yet perfectly on the one… The sound feels just like
electricity actively coursing through the spine… Funk, hypnotic thrashing white-boy blues, and punk fistfight one another for dominance … Orange is the most commercially successful set JBSE ever turned in, but that’s beside the point. In the 21st century, it sounds every bit as messed up, necessary, and frenzied as it did in 1993.” Full review here. Score: 4/5

Here’s the smashing single BELLBOTTOMS (without the LP’s strings)…

And here the album in full…
(original tracklist: #1 – #13)

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JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION: All Albums