Little Feat - Sam's Place (2024)

Country: USA
Style: Blues
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 17 May 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

The latest in a long string of bands who I had no idea were still together and releasing new music are Little Feat, who were founded back in 1969 in Los Angeles by alumni of Frank Zappa's band like Lowell George. They were talked up often by people whose voices I trusted, like Tommy Vance and Ian Gillan, both of whom played tracks by them on the Friday Rock Show, like Skin It Back and Dixie Chicken, but I could have sworn that they'd gone away before I found rock music in 1984 and they'd done that, splitting up in 1979, shortly before George died. What I missed was that the surviving members reformed in 1987 and they've been together ever since.

Back then, that meant five musicians, but time has whittled them down to three and Sam Clayton takes the mike throughout this album for the first time. The other two are Kenny Gradney on bass and Bill Payne on keyboards. Fred Tackett joined the band at the point of reformation in 1987 and guitarist Scott Sharrard and drummer Tony Leone are recent arrivals. The other reason that I have been blissfully unaware that Little Feat kept on rolling is that they haven't put out a studio album since 2012's Rooster Rag. As that featured songs by Mississippi John Hurt and Willie Dixon, maybe it pointed the way to this being fundamentally a blues album, albeit one that rocks.

Milkman is pure blues with a lovely groove. Clayton's vocals are delightfully characterful and the guitar solo is absolutely gorgeous. However, that's immediately outshone by my favourite track on the album, You'll Be Mine, which simply barrels along with punctuating horns, a lovely slide guitar and another quality guitar solo at the end. Third up is a stalker of a song, Long Distance Call, with a guest vocal appearance by Bonnie Raitt, a sleepy harmonica-driven vibe and old school country guitarwork. That's three different blues styles in three songs and they're all excellent. Little Feat have my attention.

They play with the tempo for a while, up for You'll Be Mine, down for Long Distance Call, up again for the rocking blues Don't Go No Further, down once more for Can't Be Satisfied and down again for Last Night. However, everything that follows goes back to Can't Be Satisfied to work in a more consistent style. There's a real bounce to Can't Be Satisfied that guarantees to make us move. The vocals are sassy, the harmonica follows suit and so does the rest of the album, in Why People Like That and especially Mellow Down Easy, which features two fantastic solos, one on harmonica and the other on guitar.

Nothing tops You'll Be Mine in my book, but Why People Like That comes close. It's a message song with a spectacularly simple message, pointing out that people do bad things and wondering why. The title is a question, even if it's shorn of punctuation, and we can't answer that question by the end of the song any more than Clayton can. Both are lively songs and, while this is studio work all the way through to the bonus track, a live rendition of the Muddy Waters standard Got My Mojo Working, it always has that live feel to it as if the band are just jamming in the studio. That's most obvious on the bouncy songs, of course, but there are two other reasons.

One is that Clayton's voice is gorgeous but deliberately unpolished. He's trying to sound dirty not clean and he manages it. We imagine that he's even older than his seventy-eight years, singing to us from a rocking chair on his porch. It's perfect for this material. The other is the solos, which just keep on coming. None of these songs are long, Last Night a breath shy of five minutes and the rest shorter, down to the sub-three minutes of Don't Go No Further, but they all have solos, often more than one. Everyone seems to get in on that action too, so it's not just the guitars; the harmonica gets a few and so do do the keyboards, Bill Payne especially rocking out on Last Night.

This is a joyous album. It may be that, over time, a slow song like Last Night might seem a little in the way amongst all the lively material, but I'm still loving every single track three times through and I'll be diving straight into a fourth. Now I need to check back to see what else Little Feat have been up to since their 1987 reformation. I see a huge amount of albums, but most of them are live. I'll have to figure out which are studio and see how they changed their sound across that span. But not yet. I'm listening to this again.

By the way, the album's called Sam's Place because it was recorded at Sam Phillips Recording, one of the most legendary studios in Memphis. The songs are mostly standards, even if a few were new to me, with Milkman the only original. You'll Be Mine and Mellow Down Easy are two of three that were written by Willie Dixon, so I should clearly dig deeper into his catalogue than I have thus far. Why People Like That is a Bobby Charles song, a white musician who pioneered swamp pop. I don't know his work well, though I have heard some of his more famous compositions, like See You Later, Alligator and (I Don't Know Why) But I Do.

Los Lonely Boys - Resurrection (2024)

Country: USA
Style: Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 2 Aug 2024
Sites: Facebook | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

Los Lonely Boys is made up of three brothers, the Garzas, and this is called Resurrection because it's a reunion. When Jojo Garza left in 2019, they went on hiatus, but he came back in 2022 and so they're back in business again. As they hadn't released an album for a few years before that split, this ninth album comes a decade after its predecessor. It's not only a good one, it's an agreeably versatile one, as fans might expect, because they're well known for combining rock 'n' roll, blues, country, soul and Tex-Mex into a commercial sound all their own.

The surprising song for me was the opener, Wish You Would, because the obvious influence here is the Beatles, who didn't venture much into the genres listed above. It's a rock song more than pop, but it's written exactly like Lennon and McCartney would write it and there are whole sections of music simply drenched in the Merseyside sound.

As if to counter that, it's followed by I Let You Think That You Do, which is far more ZZ Top, not just rock over pop with a powerful guitar solo, but firmly rooted in the blues and obviously flavoured with the Lone Star state. This is a song that you simply can't imagine originating from any other location, launched with harmonica and unfolding with pure Texas dirt. It wouldn't shock me if they recorded this outside in the desert with nothing in sight except for tumbleweeds and armadillos stomping their toes, except that I think they really moved all those into a roadhouse and recorded it there instead.

Much of what follows sits in between those two sounds, at least until we get to the majestic closer, Bloodwater, which returns us firmly to the blues.

Initially, it's lively in a party sense, a string of songs that are easy to dance to and often shift into a Spanish verse or two. Dance with Me is sassy and soulful, a quintessential Latin song, right down to strong brass and a Cuban beat. It takes a lot to not move to this one and, with different filters, it could be a Latin pop single. Send More Love is a textbook example of laid back country rock, with a timely hook in "This world is going crazy! Can you send more love?" Natural Thing is an engaging ballad, with a strong guitar.

As we move into the second half, things remain lively but shift more into rock 'n' roll, starting with Can't Get No Love, which is such straightforward piano and guitar driven rock 'n' roll that Elvis has to have sung it at some point. Painted Memories adds a strong dose of Latin flavour and country too, but remains just as fundamentally rooted in rock 'n' roll. Hooked on You is as different again as it can be without ever leaving that genre, sassing it up into a punchy pop rock song.

In between those three is See Your Face, which is a smoocher of a song even though it's not overt ballad material. The ladies have been dancing all the way through, but they will drag in their men for this one. But hey, let's leap past that and relish in the closer.

Bloodwater is a soft blues song with a very tasty intro indeed, shifting from dirty into smooth with effortless charm. It's somewhere in between Jeff Healey and the Neville Brothers, I think, with an excellent and patient organ providing the perfect backdrop. There are a number of strong guitar solos on this album, including on I Let You Think That You Do and Natural Thing, but this leaves all of them in the dust. This isn't just a Henry Garza solo, it's a magnetic gem, somehow laid back but still soaring, more B. B. King than Stevie Ray Vaughan. It's the jewel in an already glorious song, easily my favourite song, ahead of the very different pairing of I Let You Think That You Do and Dance with Me.

It's also a patient closer. Everything on this album is three minutes and change except for the final two tracks, because Hooked on You wraps up just a little early and this one stretches out into five langurous minutes. Of course, it has to be the final song, because nothing can follow it, except for a decision to listen to the whole album over again. Which I'm about to do once more. This is a good album by any criteria but it's an especially good return for a band who have been out of the studio for ten years and on hiatus for a few of those. Welcome back!

Robin Trower featuring Sari Schorr - Joyful Sky (2023)

Country: UK
Style: Blues Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 27 Oct 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I've reviewed a Robin Trower album this year already, but No More Worlds to Conquer came out in April 2022 and I trawled it into my traditional January catch-up of what I missed from the previous year. This one's new, from late October, and it's a very different beast to its predecessor. Of course, the focal point of all Trower's solo albums is his guitarwork but that 2022 album felt like an album of guitar with some token vocals; few songs felt like they were written as songs. This one feels like it was written as much for Sari Schorr's voice as for Trower's guitar.

And, in most instances, I think it was. Trower and Schorr share the same manager, Alan Robinson, who suggested that the former write a song for the latter. Liking what he heard, he chose instead to rework I Will Always Be Your Shelter for her voice. That was the closer on No Worlds to Conquer and it's the closer here too, but they're very different songs. There it was a ballad, a smooth one that gave Richard Watts plenty of opportunity to be tender and some to be raw and honest. Here, it's more spiritual in nature and Schorr is far more vehement, showing the hurt inside, to grab an important line from the lyrics.

After that song, this collaboration became a given and there are ten songs here to explore what a pair of musicians can do together. I say a pair, because I can't find any details about who else might be playing on it. Certainly, the usual instruments are here, but I don't know who's responsible. On that prior album, Trower played the bass himself in addition to guitar, but I doubt he also took on organ and drums, especially given that Chris Taggart has played the latter on his last few albums. But hey, I don't know. All I know is that I didn't and that's a good thing.

My favourite song here may be the opener, Burn, which is a real tease of a song. It's about trying to calm down a partner and the two participants we know play those characters. Schorr is infusing it with a smouldering fire and Trower's doing the calming, so much that he's almost minimal as it begins. It has to be said that he's aware that there's something of his classic work from the seventies on this album and this has the achingly slow pace and flow of Bridge of Sighs, even though the guitarwork is very different indeed. It's a peach of a song.

I'll Be Moving On and The Distance are more upbeat blues songs, relatively traditional but with a smoky small club vibe courtesy of Schorr. It's easy to imagine walking down the street in Memphis or any American city known for its live blues and catch snippets of this sort of thing and be enticed into a thousand different small blues clubs. Of course, few of the bands playing that music have as much abiding power as Trower and Schorr but that's just quality, not style.

The next song that stood out for me was Peace of Mind, which has a more distorted guitar. It's slow and heavy, almost an old school heavy metal song that's been stripped down and rearranged for a blues band. I could easily hear a stoner rock band speeding it back up and upping the amplification to bury us in fuzz. Other highlights are Change It, which is a funkier, more R&B song; the title track, if mostly because of its stellar guitar solo; and The Circle is Complete, which builds wonderfully, in part due to some excellent bass work. It feels like a big song from the outset but it has to grow into that over seven minutes, truly starting to do so about halfway.

And then there's I Will Always Be Your Shelter. I'm not the biggest fan of this sort of song, but I did list it as one of my highlights on No More Worlds to Conquer and I really ought to do that here too. It keeps growing on me like a rash. It's also a different enough song to everything else to stand out but not different enough to feel out of place. It's almost like a subtle punctuation mark to end the album and, in doing so, change the meaning of the whole thing. What we might think of the album might come down to what punctuation mark we think this song is. It might be an exclamation mark or even a question mark, but I think I'll take it as an em dash. Trower may be half a century into his solo career at this point but, despite the title of the previous album, he's clearly not done.

Peter Storm & The Blues Society - Second (2023)

Country: Portugal
Style: Blues Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 10 Mar 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

This band aren't remotely what they seem, which is not a bad thing. The one thing that the cover is clear about is that they're a four piece blues band and a good one as well. However, they're not an American band or indeed a British one, which seems to cover the majority of blues rock bands even today. They hail from Porto in Portugal, even though they sing in very clear English. And that's not because the very Anglo sounding Peter Storm happens just moved there, because Peter Storm has no part to play in this band, unless he's the dog on the cover. The vocalist and guitarist who clearly leads the Blues Society is João Belchior.

However, while he has a rich and warm voice with excellent inflection and he has plenty of time for his guitarwork to shine, Bino Ribeiro steals the album out from him only twenty-three seconds in. It's guitar that kicks off Write Down the Blues, though very possibly Ribeiro's rhythm guitar, but a few bars later, it's his harmonica that takes over. It's not omnipresent here, because Ribeiro has a percussion credit on top of those other two roles, but whenever it manifests, it's immediately the sound of the album for me.

For a while, there's a pattern in play. The Blues Society start out with a storming rocking blues and then slow it right down with a slow blues song, and they keep that alternation throughout the first half of the album. Write Down the Blues is the first rocker, just to get us in the mood, and Blame is the first slow blues, with a tasty groove, an elegant guitar and a haunting harmonica. Every time I start to think about how good Belchior is, Ribeiro wanders in and steals my attention right back. It would be fair to call Blame one of my favourites, a creeper of a piece with a Mark Knopfler vibe to the vocals and sometimes the guitar too.

Go Down and Play shifts back from subtle to blatant as a sassy up tempo piece even if it isn't quite the rocker Write Down the Blues was. It's more inexorable and there's that squealing harmonica to make me grin like a madman again. Then Meditation Blues lives up to its title, another slow but tasty piece. And, because you're seeing the pattern, the gloriously titled I Feel Like Breaking Up Somebody's Home Tonight ramps things back up again, adding some talkbox that works, even if it grounds the song in the seventies. What are the odds that 52nd Avenue will be a slow blues song?

Well, it isn't, just to mess with our minds, and the pattern shifts over the second half. However the songs order though, there are clearly two modes that the Blues Society mine well. The best of the rockers are early, I think, Write Down the Blues setting a high bar from the outset. However, when it comes to slow blues, all these songs resonate. Blame is an early highlight but I Told You (Not to Treat Me Wrong) may be even better. Never mind Mark Knopfler, this one trawls in Peter Green in especially its vocal approach and some in the guitarwork too.

The question I can't help but ask myself is which is the better approach of the two but I haven't got much reason to answer it. They do both well and even if, over a few listens, I might start to favour a few of the slow blues numbers over their rocking peers, I have no interest in being picky. In either mode, the songs succeed for the same reasons: Belchior's guitar (and, a little behind it, his vocals) and Ribeiro's harmonica. And even if I favour the latter without hesitation, the songs where it fails to show up at all succeed too. Just check out the delicate guitar solo that constitutes the first half of the second half of Meditation Blues. A harmonica wouldn't add anything to this piece because it's all it needs to be with that guitar. And, hey, it's all the more glorious when it shows back up on the talking blues, 52nd Avenue.

I'd have liked to have heard José Reis's bass more, but he's not interested in being flash. He stays back in the mix adding texture to the songs for the most part, though he dominates the early part of I Feel Like Breaking Up Somebody's Home Tonight. The remaining member of the band is Jorge Oliveira, who goes by Mister Shuffle, and he's a thoroughly reliable drummer who's exacty where he needs to be in the mix. He doesn't seem to shine initially but, the more we get used to what the album does, the more he stands out on repeat listens. He does a lot more on Blame than we think on our first listen. Everyone here is excellent.

I guess there's one more thing that the cover is honest about and that's that Second is the second Peter Storm & The Blues Society album. I bet you can't guess what their first was called! Of course you can and that means that you already know what title they'll slap onto the next one.

Robin Trower - No More Worlds to Conquer (2022)

Country: UK
Style: Blues Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 29 Apr 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

There tend to be more best of year metal lists than rock lists, so I dug around to find the latter and accidentally noticed that, while I was wandering around the UK on a research trip last April, Robin Trower released a new album, and so that immediately became my number one priority to review. For those who don't know this legend of British rock music, he's been around for a long time and it would be highly recommended that you check out his back catalogue, starting with the 1974 album Bridge of Sighs, which was his second solo release after leaving Procul Harum.

He's a massively influential British blues rock guitarist, enough that people like Robert Fripp have studied under him, and he's kept on putting out new solo albums for the past half century. In fact, the first, Twice Removed from Yesterday, will be celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in March. This appears to be his twenty-sixth studio album and it highlights how he hasn't lost a bit of his power over all that time. His guitar remains delicious, even if it doesn't soar as often as it used to, and it shines from the very first song, Ball of Fire, a solid but relatively routine rocker to kick things off.

The album lit up for me when it slowed down for the title track. It's not Bridge of Sighs, but it plays in the same ballpark and it's a good song with some great guitarwork from Trower. Deadly Kiss is slower still, but with a funk edge, before Trower starts bending strings as only he can. It's clear at this point that these is going to be a collection of loose tracks that mostly exist as frameworks for Trower's guitar, hardly a surprising approach and not a particularly flattering one for musicians of this calibre but an understandable one nonetheless. By the time we get to Birdsong four in, it's as if it only exists for guitar and the vocals are just an added bonus.

A few songs late in the album feel like songs as well as showcases for Trower's guitar. Cloud Across the Sun is a solid blues number, if nothing particularly surprising. It kicks off like it's something off a Stevie Ray Vaughan album, but if Trower ever thought about showing off the way Stevie did, he's quick to restrain himself, even though this is one of the more up tempo songs on the album. He has a different, mellower mood in mind and, while there are levels of intensity here, they're all on the scale from mellow to mellower.

Case in point, Fire to Ashes is softer but a little more overt as a song, Richard Watts getting his teeth a bit more into this one. I like the balance in his voice between smooth and grit and he has a nice subtle sustain that works wonderfully on this sort of slow song. Sure, Trower takes over as it runs on, but both are notable here. The Razor's Edge adds some, well, edge before the drop down to the smoothest material wraps up with the smoothest, I Will Always Be Your Shelter wrapping up the album as the most overt ballad. It's the first song that feels like it's there for Watts as much as Trower.

And what all this means is that it's hard to decide on a favourite song because they're all much of a muchness, the truest song coming out on top, namely that closing ballad. It makes far more sense to talk about a favourite solo, because that's what this album is all about, Trower's glorious guitar, and that's still not an easy choice because everything here is good on that front. Maybe I might go for The Razor's Edge, maybe the title track, maybe that closer again. Who knows. It's the one that I have playing right now, whichever that happens to be.

Trower plays both guitar and bass on this album, as he's been doing for a while, but the latter isn't remotely as notable as the former. As a guitarist, he elevates every song here. As a bassist, he just adds the necessary support. Regular collaborator Chris Taggart provides the drums while Richard Watts brings his smooth and soulful voice to the mix for the first time. When there's organ, like on Fire to Ashes, that's provided by Paddy Milner.

And that's it. If you've never heard Trower before, this is as good an introduction as any to one of the pivotal guitarists of the rock era. It's far from his best album, though, and these are far from the best songs. It's all beautiful guitar music linked together by a capable vocalist to keep it fresh. Like I said, check out Bridge of Sighs, especially if you're a guitarist yourself, and weep at what he could do with his instrument. Then listen to this and realise that he can still do it all half a century on. Finally, pick up everything in between.

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raise the Roof (2021)

Country: UK/USA
Style: Folk Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 19 Nov 2022
Sites:
Plant: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube
Krauss: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

It's been quite a while since Robert Plant teamed up with Alison Krauss for a surprising but highly successful collaboration. That was Raising Sand in 2007, released on roots label Rounder, and it did very well indeed for itself, debuting at #2 on the Billboard charts and taking home five Grammys, including Album of the Year. Now I don't usually pay any heed to the Grammys, but that's quite an achievement for a roots album. I doubt this will make a ripple because it's hardly surprising to see this collaboration in 2021, but it's still a really interesting release.

Of course, the focal point is always going to be the voices, two very different voices from different backgrounds that combine as if they were always meant to be together. This follow-up album kicks off with a wise duet, Quattro (World Drifts In), and the harmonies are heavenly. Other songs work differently, giving one voice the focus and bringing the other in to back it up and harmonise when it's needed. One reason that the collaboration works so well is that so few listeners were aware of both voices when they came in, so there was usually an element of discovery.

Rock audiences, of course, knew Robert Plant well. His influence is stamped on pretty much every rock song released in the last half century. So much of what the genre does is because he did it in Led Zeppelin and his voice only gets richer. He was 73 years old when this album came out and he's not only still at the top of his game but he keeps elevating the top of his game. I have no idea how many people expected him over Jimmy Page to be the most inventive member of Zep over coming decades, but I don't think there's even a debate as to that any more. Plant is always interesting. I think his peak here is the wavery bridges on Go Your Way but he's amazing throughout.

Americana audiences may know Plant peripherally but they know Alison Krauss well, because she's a legend in roots music, not only for her voice but for her fiddle work, which is majestic. Check out a song like You Led Me to the Wrong, which features Plant's voice but Krauss's fiddle in dark duet and see just how much she brings to the table. Other songs feature her as the lead voice and it's a thing of beauty. Her first solo jaunt here is The Price of Love, an old Everly Brothers song, and she soars and soothes and commands. She's amazing throughout too.

What surprised me most, even though it really shouldn't, is how solid this is apart from the voices. It's so easy to see country music especially as being all about the singer, and overtly country songs here like Going Where the Lonely Go are beautiful from a vocal standpoint, but the musicians you so rarely see on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry are among the best in the world and the line-up behind Plant and Krauss here is impeccable, whatever their backgrounds.

I know a few of them. T Bone Burnett is older than Plant and has been there, done that forever. It used to be that he was best known for playing guitar behind Bob Dylan but film soundtracks like O Brother, Where Art Thou? surpassed that. He makes things happen and he has the musical chops to back up whatever that might be. Bill Frisell is one of the best unknown guitarists in the world (if you think about the general public). I've adored his work since hearing the amazing cover of Going Going Gone on Rubáiyát, the Elektra Records 40th anniversary covers album. He can play anything and he can likely play it better than anyone else. Mark Ribot is always fascinating too, even when not backing Tom Waits or John Zorn. Nobody finds grooves like Ribot.

And there are plenty of grooves here. Plant does that in his sleep too, but these grooves tend not to be the rhythmic grooves he loves so much. They're certainly here, on songs like Somebody Was Watching Over Me, but mostly they're Ribot/Frisell sort of grooves, where the musicians manage to pull a tone out of their instruments that we haven't quite heard before, that conjures up mood from the very first note and sets the stage in no uncertain way for the singers to shine. They're using different guitars, different drum sticks, different techniques.

In fact, the grooves are so important here that which ones connect with you the most may shape a list of your favourite songs. For me, that's coalesced over multiple listens to pieces as different as Can't Let Go and Last Kind Words Blues. The former combines surf guitar with an Elvis swing and a sassy backing. It's a lively but deliciously subdued piece with joyous drums from Jay Bellerose. The latter is plaintive, stripped down acoustic blues that sears the soul. The guitar alone is enough to make you weep, even before the harmonies show up to destroy you utterly.

I'm sure Burnett had plenty to do with the song choices and arrangements. Not everything here is a deep cut, given that The Price of Love topped the British charts in 1965, not that it sounded like this then, but most are. Last Kind Words Blues, for instance, is a Geeshie Wiley song, a mysterious female country blues singer who put out three singles in 1930. I know some of the songwriters, like Merle Haggard, Allen Toussaint and Bert Jansch, but I need to look up others, like Ola Belle Reed, Randy Weeks and Bobby Moore and the Rhythm Aces. This is discovery for me and entertainment both, just like anything else with Burnett's name on it.

Joe Bonamassa - Time Clocks (2021)

Country: USA
Style: Blues Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 29 Oct 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

Joe Bonamassa is rightly known as one of modern America's pre-eminent blues guitarists, even if he's obviously more influenced by the British blues wave of the sixties. On his prior album, Royal Tea, he explored that side specifically, recording at Abbey Road and with British guests on board like Bernie Marsden. This one, his fifteenth, is less British but he's never going to lose the British sound entirely, even if this album starts out with hand held drums and didgeridoo.

In fact, there's a lot here to digest, so much so that there are many points where we forget this is a blues album. Not for long, mind you, but there's a very telling line in Notches to point out: "I've been all the way around the world, there and back a time of two; that road leads me home, brings me back to the blues." This does a lot of wandering around the world, but it always comes back to the blues, rather like a base of operations for Bonamassa's dabblings in prog rock or world music.

Notches certainly seems like an international song, with a British bassist, South African drummer and percussionist and a line of Australian backing singers. Of course, Bonamassa is American and so is Charlie Starr of Blackberry Smoke who co-wrote it, bringing some southern rock in with him. It's rooted in the blues, of course, but it's more southern rock than blues rock and the midsection gets neatly experimental, Bonamassa's blues guitar floating through its landscape.

Similarly, Time Clocks is rooted in the blues but we often forget that. It's soft rock, it's arena rock and it's even country, especially in Bonamassa's guitar, which is often notable for how prominent it isn't. This is a good song that's hard not to like and hard not to sing along with, but it's often an oddly commercial Pink Floyd type of song, which isn't what I expected here. What I expected was a song like The Heart That Never Waits, the unadventurous blues song that sits between these two more interesting numbers.

And so it goes. There are routine blues songs here and there are more interesting diversions from the genre, always built on the blues but happy to move quite a decent way from it. Frankly, when it plays it safe, it's enjoyable but forgettable. Mind's Eye has us close our eyes and rock in our seats, because Bonamassa does this so effortlessly well, but I was forgetting it even as it played, with an earlier song like Questions and Answers stuck in my head instead.

Yet, even there, while it's agreeably odd, it's odd in an oddly mainstream way. It feels as if it's a dangerous song rendered safe so it doesn't bite us, strongly reminiscent of Tom Waits but with Mark Ribot's jagged guitar and Waits's unmistakeable roar replaced by smoothed out edges and smoother vocals. It grabs the ear but I'm aching to hear the non-existent original. The same goes for The Loyal Kind, with its Celtic whistle and folky melodies. It's a nice enough song, but it ought to be led by a strong female voice that transports us to the forest rather than soothe us like some citrus lozenge. It does find some balls, but only at points.

And I feel out of place for thinking this. Somehow, I think most of the people buying this are going to be happiest with the songs I like least, the effortless soulful funky blues of Hanging on a Loser, Curtain Call and The Heart That Never Waits. They're going to skip the songs that grabbed me the most, like Notches, Question and Answers and even the title track. Where they and I will meet is in a shared appreciation of Bonamassa's talents. Where we'll diverge once more is in what we think about how he uses them.

Frankly, I'd like him to shut up and play his guitar, as Frank Zappa put it, because his guitar is much more interesting to me than his vocals. And I'd like him to take more of the experimental turns he took here but to take the training wheels off when he does so, because he doesn't need them. It's as if he's feeling his middle age and thinks he's playing to the Jimmy Buffett audience. Sure, you'd started out because you heard Clapton, Joe, and he's as safe as they get nowadays, but you heard him do Crossroads in the sixties and he blistered. Don't you want to blister too?

Gary Moore - How Blue Can You Get (2021)

Country: UK
Style: Blues
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 30 Apr 2021
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Continuing in the vein of previously unreleased songs finally seeing the light, which encompasses the Cirith Ungol and Serj Tankian EPs that I've reviewed this week, here's a new album from Gary Moore, who died a decade ago. Holy crap, has it been that long? Yes, indeed: he left us on 6th February, 2011 and I remember that announcement, because Moore was one of the best blues rock guitarists of all time and, while I first heard him playing straight forward rock and later metal in the eighties, it still stuns me that so many people haven't yet discovered his talents.

It's happening. He comes up a lot on YouTube nowadays, with many commenters spreading the word of a Montreux Jazz Festival cover of Roy Buchanan's timeless The Messiah Will Come Again as being the single best guitar performance of all time. It may be or it may not be—and, if you haven't see it, you should check it out sharpish—but there's no debate around Moore being able to make a guitar speak, soar and scream like few others in history and the first couple of tracks here follow him doing exactly that. They're both covers, a six minute rendition of Freddie King's I'm Tore Down and a much shorter take on Memphis Slim's Steppin' Out, but that really doesn't matter when it comes to solos and these solos truly blister.

There are eight songs on offer here, each taken from a different era in Moore's career but all firmly focused on the blues. I believe half are originals, including some beautiful slow blues numbers. In My Dreams is quite a departure from the two openers but it's a highlight nonetheless and the vibe of the album isn't lost. Love Can Make a Fool of You is even better and that goes double for the closer, Living with the Blues, which is the longest track on the album, albeit only just, and it puts that timeframe to great use. It's fair to say that, when half the songs on this album were originally by other major artists but the best ones are yours, you're doing something really right.

If you're looking for covers, the best known song is probably How Blue Can You Get, which is obviously a B. B. King number from its opening notes, even if you don't know the original. However, it's my least favourite cover here for precisely that reason. Everything else feels like Gary Moore, even if you have a background in the classic bluesmen that he's covering, but this one can't escape its origins with B. B. The last of the four, just for reference, is Done Somebody Wrong, originally by Elmore James. I'd plump for the two openers as the cover highlights.

There's really only one downside to this album, beyond Moore not being around to promote it, and it's the remaining original, Looking at Your Picture. It's not that it's a bad song, because it isn't. However, it just doesn't work in this company. It's a brooding blues number clad in alt rock clothes and, even if it plays well in isolation, it feels emphatically out of place here, whether we're looking at style, tone or even production. I get that these songs were recorded at different times in Moore's career but seven of them fit well together and this one really doesn't.

What's most annoying is that this album would still run forty minutes with this song excised and that's how it should have been released. I guess we need to excise it ourselves. Buy the album on streaming and ditch track five. You can thank me later.

Walter Trout - Ordinary Madness (2020)

Country: USA
Style: Blues Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 28 Aug 2020
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I reviewed Walter Trout's Survivor Blues in 2019, almost to the day, and it was emphatically a blues album. Like duh, you think, but it was a deep covers album that saw him reinterpret a variety of older music. This is a blues album too, of course, but it plays to me like a rock album. Robby Krieger of the Doors guested on one track and he provided the studio for this one and maybe that's a factor in why this explores the blues through the rock music it inspired rather than directly. Maybe it's just a focus back on the blues rock that he started out playing when he graduated from sideman to his own band. I haven't immersed myself deeply enough into his copious discography to be able to say.

I love how it starts. The title track is a slow blues with a smooth, laid back vibe, but it also has an odd opening and a darkness that's just a little obscured from us, like we're not supposed to see it but will always find it eventually. It's a gorgeous song, led by Trout's gorgeous guitar, but also his voice. He's never going to be remembered for his voice the way he is for his guitar, but it's perfect for this track, because it pairs an everyday vocal with an unworldly guitar and that helps.

Most of the rest of the album moves firmly into rock and often hard rock. "I still love my rock 'n' roll, the Beatles and the Stones," Trout sings on OK Boomer. "I like my music loud." On that prior album, any comparisons made would be to blues musicians, but here they're to blues rockers. The most overt rockers here may be Final Curtain Call, which reminds of Rory Gallagher, and The Sun is Going Down, a psychedelic blues rocker that brings Robin Trower quickly to mind.

The first obvious rock song is Wanna Dance, which has a real darkness to it, more obviously than that opener. I love the heavy seventies organ sound and I love how the whole song is more upbeat and up tempo, even with a dark miasma hanging over everything. Trout isn't interested in just exploring one blues rock sound though and continues to mix it up. My Foolish Pride is more of a Bob Seger song, a good one but one that feels tamer than it should, given what's gone before. It's slower and softer and more emotional, but, to my thinking, All Out of Tears does what My Foolish Pride tries and fails to do, which is to get emotional without losing the atmosphere.

It's fun to figure out the rock underpinnings here. Heartland has a Neil Young vibe. Wanna Dance has a Dire Straits feel to its intro. Heaven in Your Eyes reminds of Gary Moore's Empty Rooms. Even on a purer blues song, like Make It Right, I was reminded of Jeff Healey, who discovered that the world of rock music was very open to a blind white Canadian bluesman. Once we've heard Robin Trower in The Sun is Going Down, suddenly he's everywhere on the next listen, especially on Up Above My Sky. The only song where I felt that the blues influence was stronger than the rock audience was All Out of Tears, on which I immediately thought B. B. King.

All in all, this is a peach of a blues rock album, neatly varied and highly accomplished. Trout is closing in on seventy years of age, but this doesn't feel like an old bluesman's album, even if it wraps up with an acknowledgement of that in OK Boomer. It feels like there's serious experience there, as it should, but it also feels like Trout is still playing for the future. I look forward to another January review of a Walter Trout album.

Snowy White and the White Flames - Something on Me (2020)

Country: UK
Style: Blues Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 9 Oct 2020
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I remember Snowy White from his 1983 hit single, Bird of Paradise, as well as the pair of albums that he made with Thin Lizzy. He was the permanent replacement for Gary Moore (talk about big shoes to fill) and he appeared on Chinatown and Renegade, before giving way to John Sykes. I thought he had spent his time since working with Pink Floyd, with whom he'd been involved before Lizzy. While that's true in large part, as he's a regular part of Roger Waters's band, he's also been releasing rather a heck of a lot of solo material, under various monikers like Snowy White's Blues Agency, Snowy White Blues Project and Snowy White & The White Flames, named for his first solo album.

As you might imagine, this is blues rock in the British style and it's mostly laid back stuff that often reminds of another of his collaborators, Peter Green. The opening track, Something on Me, an almost eight minute epic that doesn't ever overstay its welcome, is one part Peter Green and one part Mark Knopfler, with a few more parts of his own style. It's gorgeous, though it highlights how much better White is as a guitarist than he is as a singer. He has a very pleasant voice, so I'm not complaining, but the result is that absolutely everyone will listen to this for the guitarwork and nobody for the vocals.

It was the next song that confused me and it wasn't the only one. I knew that I recognised something but I couldn't tell what and it drove me nuts for a while. It took me a second listen to figure some of this out and I surprised myself with the revelations. Another Blue Night is just like a Rory Gallagher song, as is the playful I Wish I Could later on, except that they're played with a soft and laid back feel rather than hard and in your face. It's their phrasing that's recognisably Gallagher because he'd never play either of them like this. Like the other nine songs, they're Snowy White compositions, as none of these songs are covers and only one has co-writers.

Another example is Cool Down, which I now realise reminds me of Iggy Pop's The Passenger, should it be slowed down, stripped of all its punk nature and played with a new vocal as a soft blues number. It sounded eerily reminiscent of something on a first listen and now it sounds odd because I've worked out why. It still sounds though and it invokes the same feel that almost everything here does, namely a bitter sweet sort of loss. Hey, it's the blues, so it has to be about loss, but here it's a faded loss from a long time ago, one that we've come to terms with and now sits alongside the good memories before it.

Nothing seems particularly deep lyrically. One of my favourite songs, for example, goes by the name of It's Only the Blues. It's another White composition but I'm sure half the bluesmen out there have written a song called It's Only the Blues and they'll all be as lyrically generic as this one. Guitarwork elevates it, along with a more memorable chorus.

While everything is generic lyrically, I think, not everything is generic musically. Beyond the soaring but polite solos, which are relentlessly enjoyable, the approaches to the theme vary. One of the most interesting songs is Commercial Suicide, an instrumental that starts out with an alt country vibe and grows into an even darker song because of Thomas White really mixing up the drums. Eventually, it's jazzy and exploratory.

The song that might get old Snowy White fans particularly interested, not that they wouldn't enjoy a new hour of his songs, is Whiteflames Chill, because it changes up the personnel. Most of this is done with Rowan Bassett on bass and Thomas White on drums, backing Snowy White on guitar and vocals. However, Whiteflames Chill brings in his old compatriots, Walter Latupeirissa on bass and Juan van Emmerloot on drums, who go back to his 1994 album, Highway to the Sun, as well as keyboardist Max Middleton, who goes back to 1987's That Certain Thing. It's a playful song, namechecking all of them in the friendly lyrics before the liveliest solo on the album. It's still the blues but life is good.

The final song has the most poignant lyrics, because it may be telling us something. White is getting old, not an unusual situation for a bluesman, but he gave up touring in 2019 because of health issues at the age of 71. "One day I will be moving on," he sings here, "like so many gone before." Hopefully, that day won't be any time soon and, touring or not, he'll continue to put out albums this consistent, this long and this often for plenty more years to come.