A band that operates in Glasgow, Natalie Pryce has just issued its first single. It’s a double A-sided release, made up of the songs “Janine” and “Bisclavaret” – two cuts that fittingly convey the band’s blend of jazz, blues and punk.
The dual essence of this release serves a specific purpose, namely exhibiting the band’s keenness on dichotomy, and establishing a ground where symmetry can be analyzed without compromises or apologies.
The tandem works as intended, as affection and abjection and are explored back and forth between these two compositions, resulting in the blackest of whites and vice versa.
There are only two guitar players that make me stop whatever I am doing and listen as if each note they are playing were nothing short of irreproducible both technically and sentimentally by anybody else.
As you already know, Richard Thompson is one of them. And now I’d like to introduce you to the other one. Like Thompson, he is also from England. But their styles couldn’t be more different.
Chris Rea is a slide guitar player that spent the first part of his career playing rock & roll until a miraculous recovery from pancreatitis made him decide to devote the rest of his studio life to the blues.
And unlike Richard Thompson, Chris Rea did have hits. His 1989’s album “The Road To Hell” brought him out of cult obscurity across the whole of Europe. “The Road To Hell” will always stand as one of the most meaningful works in a decade that was not that remarkable otherwise. The album offered a razor-sharp study of the stray ways of modern life without ever stooping to the gratuitousness of other contemporary acts.
And the commencement of Rea’s career in 1978 was actually quite auspicious: the song “Fool (If You Think It’s Over)” almost cracked the Top 10 in the US, and remains his most popular song in America to this day. Both that album (named “Whatever Happened to Benny Santini?”) and its follow-up were produced by no other than Gus Dudgeon. Rea has always bemoaned that Dudgeon’s approach was unsuitable for his blues-derived material. The truth is that Dudgeon made one thinly-disguised attempt after the other to have Rea sound like pop acts that had given him worldwide recognition such as Elton John. Chris was to eventually record some of those songs anew later on. Continue reading →
This Is The Original CD Cover. A Re-release Saw The Light In The Year 2000, And It Features A More Informative Booklet. The White Lettering Is Different.
As you know by now, I am very attached to country music. It is probably my favorite American genre. It was only natural that I would start exploring Southern rock in due time, and that is exactly what has happened. Over the last week I purchased both a ZZ Top “best of” album and an Allman Brothers’ compilation, as well as locating a Lynyrd Skynyrd anthology that I will get my hands on soon.
While I enjoyed the ZZ Top album (and far more than I would have expected, to be frank), the one I came back to the most often this week was the Allman Brothers’ compilation. As its title implies, it collects their salient recordings during a whole decade, (1969 – 1979). Four studio albums and one live recording are covered here. Continue reading →
