If you look towards the FM dial, you’re going to notice that there isn’t a lot of country music with any sense of serious muscle making its way onto the charts at the moment, but if you think this is going to stop an artist like Albert Cummings from doing what he does best in the studio this summer, you’ve got another thing coming in the new single “Two Hands.” “Two Hands” sees Cummings abandoning any sort of filtration between his sound and the audience, and to me, it’s one of the most appropriately aggressive blues songs of its kind to hit record store shelves this month.
The lead vocal in this single isn’t quite the centerpiece we would initially assume it to be in a conventional country crossover; it’s almost more of an accent on the guitar parts, an extension of the rhythm, and an avenue through which the verses can reach the listener and not much more. When he’s singing, Cummings is as much an instrument as his trusted six-string is, which tells you a lot about the way he views integrated arrangements with a lot of panache in their instrumental bones.
I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing this artist perform in a live setting thus far – though I definitely want to in the near future – but I get the idea that this song has the potential to be one of his concert staples. There’s so much potential for the riff in “Two Hands” to come undone for the right crowd of people, and no matter how big the venue happens to be, this is an artist who could find a way to fill up the room with his sound (particularly with the help of his two cohorts also featured in the music video for this track).
Hardcore country fans who are able to value the link between roots, blues, Americana, and the Nashville they know and love today are going to think the world of Albert Cummings in this performance, and I personally don’t know that he could have picked a better track to come into the end of summer with. “Two Hands” is electric but not meandering, like so many other country-blues tunes tend to be when they’re not drawn from vintage sources, and it’s already developing quite the identity for both itself, its video, and the man and his band responsible for creating it.
