G. Love’s “Fixin’ to Die” hits stores on Tuesday, February 22. G. Love & Special Sauce’s tour in support of the new album comes to Harlow’s (2708 J St.) on Wednesday, April 13. Tickets are $25 and are currently on sale through Harlow’s ticket page. Stay tuned to Sac Press the week of the show to read an interview with G. Love, with his thoughts on the new record and recording with the Avett Brothers.

Scott Avett said it best about G. Love’s “Fixin’ to Die:” “This is the record we all knew he should make and he could make.” Truth be told, he basically did make it once already with 1998’s “G. Love Has Gone Country,” but that was an independent release that was so under the radar, you can pretty much only get it through his website, at shows, or used on Amazon; you’d have had a hard time finding it at Tower Records and you’d never see it at any store with the word “Mart” in it.

The enigmatically smooth and uber-cool Garrett “G. Love” Dutton has always ninja’d a few small red herrings of country and classic Americana into his famed and now nearly flawless meld of hip hop and blues, but there was always the sense that he was unwilling (unable?) to outwardly throw it into his mix. Turns out, it took the nudging of Seth and Scott Avett (better known at the Avett Brothers) to get him to really turn it out, and when they got into the studio with him to produce “Fixin’ to Die” after sharing the stage together at last year's Summer Camp Music Festival in Illinois, they ended up helming one of the most important albums of G’s career.

While playing like an acoustic sequel to “Cold Beverage,” the cheeky “Milk & Cereal” warms things up before giving way to the album’s title track, a haymaker of a take on the classic Delta blues tune penned by Booker T. “Bukka” Washington White. G. Love lays down a murky, thick, rib-tickling drop-tuned guitar riff, with the Avetts clapping, singing and banging along in the background as jovially as a kid drumming on a laundry tub in the backyard in August.

“Fixin’ to Die” has the unfortunate fate of being released in February, because it has summertime literally gushing out of it, with the kind of foot-slamming rocking chair jams that will wear a swath in the planks of your front porch while you waft in the fresh cut grass and repeatedly pull the tabs off the cans of whatever cheap twelver you bought with your last nine bucks.

With shades of lusty odes to the opposite sex live “Baby Got Sauce” and “Booty Call,” “Just Fine” is a deliciously vintage electric-tinged G. song, but it precedes the official confirmation that G. Love recording with the Avetts was possibly one of the best ideas in history. “You Got to Die” finds the three of them tossing around vocal duties in a slip-and-slide honky tonk anthem that will make you immediately want to head for the hills, find whatever swinging-door saloon they recorded the thing in, order some whiskey, and smile.

It would take a sonic surgeon to completely remove the emcee tendencies with which G. Love sings; his hip-hop styles are hanging around the block throughout this record, but he has them in near perfect balance. He allows the free-beat style to float near the surface when appropriate (“Ma’ Mere”), but anchors it down to the deep when it’s time for a little troubadour crooning (“Katie Miss”).

“Get Going” is hip-snapping, Hammond-shocked jam that would have been a too-hot-for-wax censored tune had it been recorded back in the Sun Records days (which it actually sounds like it could have been); you know, the time when music was just starting to get a little naughty. If there is a downside to “Fixin’ to Die,” it is that the junk-tuned country blues motif tends to recycle itself through several of the tunes, but this sound has pretty fresh legs in the hands of G and the Avetts, so they’re able to pull it off with ultimately enjoyable precision.

G. is at his finest in employing his unique vocal approach as well as this “new” sound with reverence to the original in covering Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” and leaves us on a wistful note with Lou Reed’s “Pale Blue Eyes.”

This album is certain to be a timeless addition to G. Love’s criminally underrated catalog, but perhaps more exciting will be the next step he takes from here: Will it be a return to the hip hop blues style for which he is so celebrated, or more of this newfound troubadour fling...

Check out this video of G. Love laying down "Fixin' to Die" with the Avett Brothers