Of the two the seventysomething Ford is definitely the wildest and weirdest. She Ain't None of Your'n, T-Model's third album for Fat Possum, is a typically crazed collection of the blues primitivist's passions and peeves, from the aching version of the standard Sail On to the bizarre, down-home surrealism of Ford's own Chicken Head Man and the cantankerous rural soap opera She Asked Me So I Told Her. Like the idiosyncratic blues of John Lee Hooker, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Junior Kimbrough, Ford seems to care less about rhythm than he does about the violence of his delivery and the pile-driving punch of the music. His guitar sprays a flurry of razor-sharp leads and hefty chunks of open-tuned raunch, while an array of drummers -- including his long-time running buddy Spam -- bang out ramshackle beats that underpin the chaos of Ford's unique, often frightening, slop-bucket sound.
Sixty-year-old Robert Belfour is neither maverick nor madman. His percussive acoustic-guitar style is a throwback to the unbridled attack of prewar blues master Charley Patton, yet his vocals have the warmth and intimacy of a John Hurt or Lightnin' Hopkins. What's Wrong with You, Belfour's Fat Possum debut, has an ambiance of midnight melancholy and devastating heartache; Done Got Old is a haunting meditation on mortality, while My Baby's Gone and the title track are remarkable, propulsive essays on loss and loneliness. Although his songs pull together fragments of numerous traditional blues staples, Belfour makes them his own through the passion of his singing and the subtle majesty of his playing. In a year that's already cluttered with fine blues albums, What's Wrong with You may wind up being the greatest of the double zero.