Honkin' on Bobo

Whenever a band makes a covers album that they herald as a “return to their roots,” it’s a safe bet their songwriting well is bone dry. With Aerosmith, that’s a foregone conclusion: Their records over the past decade have been seven different kinds of awful, as they recruited a gaggle of creative hands to patch over the empty space where their songs used to go. So it’s not surprising that Honkin’ on Bobo—a passionate romp through a slate of blues classics—is their most listenable effort since the mid-’80s. Joe Perry’s guitar smokes through “Baby, Please Don’t Go” in a way we’d forgotten it could, while Steven Tyler does what he does best: howl, writhe, vamp, and growl. They make a noble, if ultimately misguided, pass at the gospel standard “Jesus Is on the Mainline,” but it only proves another Aerosmith maxim: They do Saturday night much better than they do Sunday morning.