It seems that the engaging white bluesman is experiencing an orgasm of creativity since the blows are consecutive. After the exquisite Black Rock and the storming Black Country Communion, the wonder “boy” of the contemporary American blues scene keeps firing at will, presenting yet another album, titled Dust Bowl.

Setting off as it should, Slow Train, with its title and content fitting his recent style perfectly. Heavy and slowish rock blues and Joe wails like a real train with the band calling shotgun…

Dust Bowl returns to the Slow Jin era, enriched with the Black Rock sounds and a… lounge feeling, very agreeable, travelling and perfectly fitting as the album title. Lead guitars that remain secondary to the atmosphere and feeling that prevail in the end.

Let’s go somewhere else… Together with John Hiatt, the Duke boys and other southern animals, a more southern rock’n’roll style, a road-trip to Tennessee in a huge convertible Cadillac owned by Hiatt. Let me tell you, it’s all right!

That was a small break, though cause we’re back in the blues and with the Meaning of The Blues, Bonamassa marries traditional white rock-blues with Black Sabbath (!). Yes, listen to that part of the main riff and call again! Long running trademark solo, a consequent duration and the result is guaranteed.

Turn on the road and south we go again, right through the never ending cotton fields all the way to the horizon. The Black Lung Heartache rocks relentlessly, it never roars but it really rolls.

Back to the blues once more and You Better Watch Yourself, electrified and black to the bone, more than anything else in here so far…

The Last Matador Of Bayonne is the most ambient track of the album, goes in slow, heavily but quietly only to climax, temporarily, somewhere in the middle in a heartbreaking solo, carrying along the sound of a distant trumpet that holds the foundation of the song story.

And since the BCC combination really worked and since there’s more of that to follow soon, Glenn Hughes jumps aboard and contributes to a nice adaptation of Free’s Heartbreaker just after the middle of the album right before No Love On The Street and The Whale That Swallowed Jonah, granting a 70s identity to the whole thing.

Lest we don’t forget, Bonamassa is  basically a pure blues musician and it would be an error to walk away from it. Don’t despair, Vince Gill is here to help and his own Sweet Rowena is the closest thing to Bonamassa’s roots in this album.

Prisoner is the ideal goodnight going slow and moody, depicting what Bonamassa was trying to say all along this album.

And what would that be? Well, what Joe says here is that he really liked the BCC project. Sio much that he decided to dare a fundamental change to his approach of his own music. And that’s because this Bonamassa album is less bluesy than anytime before and more European than ever, containing bits, pieces and sounds that he always kept inside hismusic but never decided to bring up front. He may be considered by many as one of the most important bluesmen of  his generation, his background maybe black as coal (as is for any real bluesman that respects himself), however the 70s white blues variation was always a part of him. Now, ten albums later he has earned the right to mix his influences exactly as he wishes and this is what he does here and what he will keep on doing until he decides otherwise.