The Big Bottle of Joy is about celebration – hard-won, overflowing, exuberant celebration. Matt Andersen’s latest long-player lives up to the grand title from its opening song, “Let It Slide”; a muscular, organ-drenched urge for people to chill out and be good to each other – to its understated, romantic curtain-closer, “Shoes.” Andersen finds reason to sustain this celebration of the life we share together everywhere – on the road, missing a lover; between the sheets in a southern Ontario motel room; from Montreal “all the way to New Orleans;” in a “little kitchen ballroom” on a quiet night at home. Over a dozen songs infused with raw blues-rock, rollicking Americana, thoughtful folk, and ecstatic gospel, he testifies to something we could all do well to remember: the time we have together is special, so let’s spend it the right way.