A musician can either keep doing what he or she has been doing-assuming there's an audience for it- or try something new, which may succeed or backfire like an old Ford Pinto. Dylan going eletric worked, Dylan doing gospel didn't. Canadian bluesman Big Dave McLean's 'Better The Devil You Know' is a doppelganger (or at least a body double) for his 'Faded But Not Gone' release fro 2015. The songs are similar and the backing players mostly the same. Even Jack White (ex-White Stripes) gets another thank you, this time for letting McLean use a penny arcade recording booth from the 40's. Last time the nod was for Jack's vintage photo booth. So if th enew album is a deja vu, is it worth having? Definitely. Nothing wrong with having too much of a good thing coming from a particular circumstance in the studio. McLean, who is perennially up for the Juno awards (Canada's answer to Grammy's, minus most of the stupid posturing and costumes), has spent many of his 66 years playing blues across the North Country's sprawling provinces. He knows how to sing about hard-scrabble life and has a suitably gravel-lish voice for it. This time McLean offers five of his own compositions, two by producer Steve Dawson, and the rest are either songs from the Chicago electric catalog or public domain tunes associated with traveling bluesmen from the Delta. One of the traditionals is "You'll Need Somebody On Your Bond," a song central to Blind Willie Johnson's legacy which McLean gives a full gospel treatment, right down to an opening chorus from Ann and Regina McCrary (their father co-founded the Fairfield Four). McLean then follows it with a new song about Blind Willie having left his long-suffering wife with nothing but the blues. There is also a song about Skip James called "The Side of the Road," as well as a cover of Johnny Shines' "Pet Rabbit" recorded in White's old arcade booth) and two Muddy Waters tunes, the relatively obscure "Deep Down in Florida" and more familiar "You Can't Lose What You Ain't Never Had." McLean is aided and abetted by fellow Canadians John Dymond and Gary Craig (the rhythm section from Blackie and the Rodeo Kings), Dawson on electric guitar, and keyboard master Kevin McKendree. Sometimes more of the same is actually more.