by Stewart MasonA promising guitarist whose personal troubles have perhaps kept him from realizing his full potential, Lurrie Bell rebounded from an early-'90s nadir with the intense and sometimes bizarre Mercurial Son, almost like a Chicago blues version of Skip Spence's Oar. The following 700 Blues was considerably more polished, but 1998's Kiss of Sweet Blues finds a workable middle ground between the two extremes. The songs, mostly by producer/rhythm guitarist Dave Specter and bassist Harlan Terson with Bell contributing only a pair of riff-based instrumentals, aren't as challenging as those on Mercurial Son, but they're entirely credible; "Blues and Black Coffee" and "Hiding in the Spotlight" have the hard-earned intensity to put themselves over even if they lack the earlier album's knife-edge immediacy and sometimes peculiar phrasing. Bell's solos are impeccable throughout, and his backing group, also including funky organist Rob Waters, is tight and admirably resistant to showboating.