Rolling Stone's Review of NMA's" Polaris "

[Jaimoe]

It sounds like the North Mississippi Allstars' new album, Polaris , is more like 51 Phantom than Shake Hands With Shorty ... unfortunately. We'll have to wait and see. My problem with 51 Phantom was that it was waaaay over-produced, whereas their first CD was gritty, sparce and embraced past and present blues heroes. Shake Hands With Shorty is a revival of sorts and a latter-day Mississippi blues masterpiece. Anyway, the dude at Rolling Stone gave Polaris 3 stars out of 5.

Rolling Stone Review:

Hard-driving blues foursome gets a little too caught up in the jam on their first two albums, these guys -- led by brothers Cody and Luther Dickinson, who both sing and play drums and guitar, respectively -- would open a vein and bleed all over a crunching riff in some voodoo religious rite that hearkened all the great ancestral blues spirits of northern Mississippi. Their third album, Polaris, doesn't do that. It is immersed not in blood but jam. Not that the songs go on forever; twelve in forty-five minutes won't tax your attention span. But the blues spirits have departed -- despite the addition of R.L. Burnside's son DeWayne on guitar -- and we have a Widespread/Allman/Dead/Phish vibe in their place, meaning the arrangements can get complicated as the musicians challenge one another in search of a wow. And there are some solid wows here as they careen into psychedelia and jazz, determined that no one be allowed to zone out in a long groove. There isn't much emotion, though, and just one song ("Never in All My Days") where they really throttle a riff. The problem may be in the lyrics, which don't add any wildly original ruminations on the behavior of one's baby, but the wows offer some compensation.

CHARLES M. YOUNG

(RS 931, September 18, 2003)

[c-towns]

I agree, I thought Shake Hands With Shorty was a brilliant album, and then I bought Phantom 51 expecting better, man was I ever dissapointed.

[Jaimoe]

51 Phantom's songs play better live, but they still aren't that strong.

I think it has something to do with Luther and Cody writing originals for the first time ( Shake Hands With Shorty were all covers ). They are young and have lots of potential.

Hopefully they'll turn into great songwriters, as great as they are as live performers.

[CyberHippie]

Interesting, I have 51 Phantom, and I think it's a pretty good album. Now I'm definetly interested in picking up Shake hands with shorty, if you guys think it's the better one...

[c-towns]

By far the better one, I really like how the first 5 or 6 tracks blend into each other.

Pick this up for sure, 100 times better than Phantom 51.

peaceinjam.jamesd.

[Jaimoe]

51 Phantom is fairly flat sonically. Shake Hands bristles with energy. It's a must own. Shake Hands is sooo much better than 51 that you'll think about selling it to a used music store.