Having not attentively followed the original band -- Downchild, long a mainstay of the Canadian blues scene -- I don't claim to know all the ins and outs of its history and career. From what I read, however, I am going to presume that the Hogtown Allstars are a side project led by two of the members of the foundational group, namely Chuck Jackson (harmonica) and Gary Kendall (bass), alongside five countrymen prominent elsewhere as masters of the continent's roots sounds. As opposed, say, to a breaking-up and a fleeing in other directions.

Fittingly, the Allstars may afford the impression of greasy pork ribs, though the former no doubt are better for you than the latter. Weirdly, you'd swear that sometimes they almost literally cause your mouth to water. On Hog Wild you're not exactly going to be exposed to anything you haven't been exposed to before, at least if blues and r&b are frequent servings in your listening diet, but you'll be treated to something akin to expert chefs delivering it out of a kitchen on a raucous New Orleans street. It's not quite a single dish. For example, the band offers up a superior treatment of a Jackson original, a strongly conceived and performed Mississippi-flavored blues titled "Biscuits & Beans." The title song feels like an old-fashioned Chicago blues-party workout.

Mostly, though, this is a couple of varieties of classic r&b/soul of the sort that was at its most widely popular a few decades ago, when you could hear it (or so perhaps wistful memory misinforms me) at almost any moment as you flipped the top-40 radio dial or monitored the jukebox. It has never gone entirely out of fashion. That's because it's so hard for so many to resist, most of all when it's encased in danceable melodies, irresistible vocals and more-than-able bands in full command of the appropriate instruments to dish out the rhythms. None of that is absent here. Jackson, who has composed eight of the 10 cuts, is a golden-toned writer whose songs, if recognizable in style and outlook, yet come across as distinctive. It doesn't hurt, either, that he seems to have learned to sing from Chicago's Howlin' Wolf.

At the extremes my responses to the new music, whatever the genre that arrives in packages on my front porch, range from "How could anyone like this?" -- in which case I don't review it unless I'm desperate to make a point about why a particular approach offends my sense of the appropriate -- to "How could anyone not like this?" In the latter instance I am willing to make allowances, sometimes. None apply here. Hog Wild delivers the goods in every department and on every level. As the Allstars work their wonders, the rest of us need only smile happily.

[ visit the Hogtown Allstars online ]