ROUND-UP: BLUES
Jared James Nichols Jared James Nichols BLACK HILL
Following a horror tour accident that left the Nashville guitarist with sixteen screws in his picking arm, Jared James Nichols’s self-titled third album feels like a man resetting after an identity crisis. If these 12 songs are his new set of clothes, they’re a good fit, with Nichols’s promised “loud-ass guitars” sprayed convincingly over his hardest collection to date.
An early highlight is recent single
Down The Drain, a spindly, nihilistic, throatflaying alt.rocker with a riff the 90s grunge mob would have gladly claimed and a wah-wah solo they couldn’t have pulled off. Likewise Hard Wired, which opens with a sonic freak-out like Hendrix riding a giant hornet, before settling into a caveman clud that suggests an unhurried Bill Ward behind the drum kit. Sabbath are surely the touchstone for Hallelujah and Bad Roots’ elemental power blues too, but Nichols’s growing heaviosity is tempered with considerable invention, not least on Skin ‘N Bone, which sounds like Muse playing the James Bond theme. A lucky break, on this evidence.
Erja Lyytinen Waiting For The Daylight TUOHI
Slide guitar is her trade, but the Finnish bandleader has kept her catalogue moving with scattershot influences rather follow her peers down the Duane Allman rabbit hole. This album is a case in point: Last Girl twins Maiden with Satriani, You Talk Dirty grunts like War Pigs. With just a little more nuance to her lyrics she’d be unstoppable.
Aynsley Lister Along For The Ride STRAIGHT TALKIN’
While pushier British blues cubs have risen and fallen around him over the years, Lister’s long-game approach has built an exemplary catalogue, to which this album is a fine addition.
Made Up My Mind is a busy-beat soulrocker, while Bide My Time captures a wistfulness that most axe slingers miss, engineered for dusk walks.
Malaya Blue Blue Credentials BLUE HEART
Malaya Blue’s previous album, Still, was rightly celebrated, and here the British singer retains the partnership with writer/producer Dennis Walker (who died in January). Walker’s graceful touch ensures this album is a cut above, and with Blue’s bruised voice inhabiting every lyric it’s a happy frustration to wonder where this double act was headed next.
The Boneshakers One Foot In The Groove TAKE IT TO THE BRIDGE
There’s a whiff of early Stones here, with their backing singer
Bernard Fowler guesting on a spirited Let’s Spend The Night Together. But the real star is Jenny Langer, who delivers her vocals like a domesticated alley cat, flaying everyone except the Big Legged Man who brings her Ice Cream And Cigarettes on two soul slowies.