"Historically, Liebig will funk ya, he will blues ya, he will even metal ya occasionally just to get his greater point across. “Always Outnumbered” is his way of modernizing the blues, keeping some rhythmic flavor and some traditional structure but appropriately distancing the form somewhat from the soil while substituting a sense of unease and disconnect we can all understand. In this he made a canny choice by teaming up with Scot Ray, whose electrified dobro is capable of both the downest of Delta slidations and the noisiest of apocalyptic disruptions. Drummer Joseph Berardi always keeps substantial trashcan beats under his freeform fingernails, and cornetist Dan Clucas, though a wool-dyed avanteer, consistently allows the clear enunciations of the human voice to pour through. Liebig’s muscular six-string electric bass weaves up, down and around with such fluidity -- sometimes driving, sometimes commenting or arguing -- that it seems almost subconscious. Well, it is his music.

The blues include a limping shuffle, a slow yawner, a start-stop urban strut, a poky prodder, a straight boogie and a Beefheartian boozer, all rendered ungeneric by off-center harmonies, lopsided beats and even some Arabic guitar melisma. Liebig always dishes up some of that Beefheart stew, the difference in the blues-battering being that where the Captain was at root an instinctive hippie in overalls, Liebig is more of a suburban crank schooled in Schoenberg.

Can you dance to it? Yeah. You probably won’t, though."
-Greg Burk