Local new act

Mr. Airplane Man

Soul sisters

The thing about the Delta blues is that there's no way to make 'em more punk than they already are. Listen to Mississippi Fred McDowell's "Shake 'Em on Down" or Son House's "Death Letter" and you'll get the picture: the ol' two-chord hump, the switchblade slash, the whole thing moving too fast for accuracy -- it's all right there, 50 years ago, waiting to be discovered. Besides the Boston duo Mr. Airplane Man, only two other bands in this generation -- Doo Rag and 20 Miles -- have figured out that all you gotta do is take the blues at their word, and the rest falls into place. But neither of the other two has quite captured the authentic, haunting lonesome moan and voodoo beat the way Airplane has. Margaret Garrett is like some freak of nature, a twentysomething suburban white girl slinging a Dobro slide like ex-sharecroppers thrice her age; Tara McManus, a student of African percussion, pounds the ancient, hypnotic, off-kilter beat as if it's in her blood. (You can get a taste of their mojo on a self-released album they recorded with Morphine's Mark Sandman, with whom they also toured earlier this year.) Their own compositions are virtually indistinguishable from their repertoire of folk-blues classics -- which might include, on any given night, McDowell, Howlin' Wolf (from whose song they took their name), R.L. Burnside, the traditional "Jesus on the Mainline," and, if you're lucky, the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog." But it's their knack for making the Stooges sound like Son House -- and not vice versa -- that makes 'em a rare treasure, one you're likely to hear plenty more about, and soon.

-- Carly Carioli