CD Reviews

Dax Riggs

We Sing of Only Blood or Love | Fat Possum

By MIKAEL WOOD | November 13, 2007

3.0 Stars

Last year, Dax Riggs was one-half of Deadboy & the Elephantmen, whose goth-groovy Fat Possum disc you might’ve heard if your appetite for boy-girl blues-rock duos wasn’t satisfied by the White Stripes and the Fiery Furnaces. This year Riggs is flying solo, at least in name: We Sing of Only Blood or Love is his accurately titled debut as Dax Riggs. That doesn’t mean he recorded it all by himself in some candlelit Louisiana outhouse — he made it with Matt Sweeney, the indie-rock magpie who’s worked lately with Billy Corgan (in Zwan) and Will Oldham (on their Superwolf album). Sweeney was a wise choice: he provides a stylistic variety that ensures that Riggs’s material never gets bogged down in some misguided attempt at keeping it real. (One of the best tunes here could almost pass for an outtake from Marilyn Manson’s latest.) And since he plays much of the guitar on Blood or Love, he frees up Riggs to focus on his singing, which at its finest is sexy and scary in equal measure.

Dax Riggs + Beaten Awake + Pet Genius | Middle East upstairs, 472 Mass Ave, Cambridge | November 15 | 617.864.EAST

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