Top Picks

Mud Pie Records [usr 4] From East Anglia to the world In the fens and along the coasts of East Anglia, the blues burn with a fervour that the devoted each bring to their own individual pilgrimages and pleas to the unconverted to join this happy band. In the vanguard come The Dove and Boweevil Band with their stonking great second album THIS LIFE, an album born out of personal adversity, trauma and, ultimately, triumph, for this album very nearly didn’t happen as guitarist Mark ‘Boweevil’ Howes’ routine throat operation really didn’t go as planned. But not to dwell on such things, as Mr Howes and Lauren Dove have conjured up an album as good as anything that British blues has had to offer this year, 12 self-written tracks of blues inspired variety from the rocking opener Food For Love to the much more vulnerable closer Maple Leaf. Along the way we have the shuffle of Need A Little Love, Fireworks, but probably not of the sort with which we remember the failure of Mr Fawkes, and the wonderful East Coast Blues with its New Orleans feel. With a full band behind them and a deft horn section, this could be lift-off for Dove and Boweevil, with a full diary for 2016 and the wind in the right direction there will be no stopping them and I, for one, will be happy to watch them strut their stuff. Ian Ambrose www.doveandboweevil.co.uk

   New Mountain Music [usr 2] Terrific pickin’ and cool blues from a new young pretender.  It’s always difficult to review an album of covers because there’s always an almost unavoidable tendency to compare what you hear to the originals and it doesn’t always end well. I’ve always believed that if an artist is going to cover anything that’s well known they should bring something new to it. Think about what Hendrix and Joe Cocker brought to their sensational performances of their famous covers of songs by Dylan and The Beatles, they’re so great that I don’t even need to name them (do l?). So, what we have here is ten songs from the bottomless well of the blues delivered by a young gunslinger who clearly has the requisite enthusiasm even if he doesn’t (yet) quite have the grit in his otherwise excellent voice. Sunjay is a fine player and a pleasant enough vocalist but I’m not convinced that he has the maturity to inject these songs about death, gambling, drinking and hard times with enough darkness to convince me. The songs themselves are undoubted classics and he certainly has an eye for a classy blues tune so we get the likes of Delia, St James’ Infirmary, Nobody Wants to Know You When Your Down and Out and One Bourbon, One Scotch and One Beer alongside less well known but equally fine tunes such as Duncan & Brady (covered with style by Bob Dylan sometime ago), Drop Down Mama and Pallet On the Floor.   One thing that’s perfectly clear though is that Sunjay is an excellent musician and his tremendous playing is perhaps the best part of this album. Check out the chopping chords in the opening track alongside his take on John Lee Hooker’s One Bourbon. Given enough time, some more original songs and, perhaps, a band Sunjay might give us a more dynamic and interesting take on the wonder of the blues. www.sunjay.tv Greg Johnson  

  [usr 3] Irish musician delivers mysterious dreamy folk-inspired album Strawboy’s debut album, Tidal Islands was fittingly recorded in an old cinema projection room in Amsterdam, which adds to its quirkiness and experimental quality. The Irish musician, Ciarán O’Rourke (also known as The Trickster), was formerly a London-based session musician, yet in recent years he felt he needed to step away from city life and focus on his own music. He returned home to Ireland and over the space of two years, secluded himself away to craft the basis of his debut release, that he wrote, produced (with Maarten de Boer) and arranged. His breathy spoken folk sound has an oddly hypnotic feel to it, which he has combined with an overarching techno influence and mysterious mood. He’s joined on the recording by a wide range of musicians, playing everything from the 8-string tenor ukulele and drums, to tenor and baritone saxophones, trumpet and harp, which all add to an intriguing sound. Iona is a strangely captivating and fascinating track, which was inspired by reading a book by Iona Opie, the anthropologist who, in the 1950s, documented the rhyming slang in playgrounds that has existed for hundreds of years. Therefore, the song is a plethora of folklore and superstition, featuring a group of children chanting an ambiguous re-recorded pidgin English rhyme from Puerto Rico, and includes a stunning harp performance. It’s these little touches and turns of inspiration that add to an overall quirky and interesting eight-track album. Revellers/Revolutionaries is dominated by sounds of the trumpet and jazzy drum beats, whereas Live & Breathe is piano-driven and haunting in its dreamy delivery. Inspired by his upbringing in the far west of Ireland, and his new home base of Amsterdam – with added folklore, symbols and superstitions – Tidal Islands is an authentic debut release. www.strawboymusic.com