One morning, I walked over to my car and discovered that it had been broken into during the night. The thieves were professional, in my view, and courteous too, since they managed to unlock the doors without causing a single scratch. But, alas, they still made off with all the CDs I had been collecting in there, about 10 or 12 at most, and nothing else was missing or damaged, so in the end it was just a nuisance that was best left ignored, to be taken lightly as a mere inconvenience. One of those CDs was the latest release from Books on Tape, the ongoing project by Todd Drootin who has been busy with a number of recent releases crowding the shelves of late. Sings the Blues, out on the No Type label (IMNT 088), is not a blues record, to be sure. It’s energy is incessantly high; right from the first moments, the hard, up-tempo, almost aggressive rhythms build your energy up to a raw, inexplicable high. Like a climax in a heist film, Henry Mancini’s music blaring wildly with jazz touches; but this isn’t Mancini, and there is no jazz touch here: it’s all electro, all pounding rhythms and simple, energetic melodies, from start to finish. If my copy wasn’t stolen, I couldn’t say how often I would return to this music, but it was great company for a few hi-speed car chases.