Wild Bill Hickock’s last poker game is the opening image on “Aces and Eights.” The CD single by Milwaukee’s Riverwest Aces has almost as many verses as a Bob Dylan song and tells tales of dread across two centuries. An Americana gauze is stretched across the framework of a four-square beat. The spare arrangement includes sadly sawed violin and faintly foreboding saxophone, enhancing the dirge-like impression of a soundtrack to a half-remembered nightmare. The tone will remind longtime local music fans of latter-day work by the late poet-player Martin Jack Rosenblum.
Full disclosure: One member of The Riverwest Aces, Blaine Schultz, is employed by the Shepherd Express.
