It’s as if Alvin Youngblood Hart, one of the best of the younger generation of contemporary bluesmen, had crawled out of a time capsule to make this album of acoustic numbers from the early days of the music. And not just because the Oakland-born multi-instrumentalist moved to Mississippi and embarked on a pilgrimage to find and restore 1930s guitars, banjos, and mandolins to create the same sounds as Sam Chatmon, Charley Patton, Son House, Skip James, and the other pioneering players he invokes on these recordings. It’s obvious from the first moans of the prisoner’s lament "How Long Before I Can Change My Clothes" and the wails of long-gone sharecroppers he conjures in Odetta’s "Chilly Winds" that Hart feels these songs completely. His pluck-and-drone playing works magic, blowing under the cotton-and-dust tones that float up from his throat, and creates a slow, steady momentum that amounts to nothing less then the sound of Jim Crow–era protest. Hart’s decision to take numbers like Leadbelly’s "Alberta" and Patton’s "Tom Rushen Blues" at tempos slower than the originals allows him to increase their hypnotic intensity with his slowly evolving chords and the light, airborne sandpaper in his voice. By the time he’s through, he’s generated enough stark power to make one of the year’s best blues CDs so far.