It’s looking like a great year for British Blues! What with Eric Bibb and Elkie Brooks at Ashburton. Robert Cray and Van Morrison in London. Chris Farlowe and Cliff Bennett at Maryport, and Robin Trower and Connie Lush at Cleethorpes. But along with all these big names, some shining new homegrown talent can be seen rising to the top slots.
One example is the up and coming blues-rock band
ALBANY DOWN who played a scorching set at this years
Burnley International Rock and Blues Festival - earning themselves a bunch of delighted new fans.
Supporting the legendary guitarist Jimmy Vaughan on the main stage at the
BURNLEY MECHANICS venue, the band zipped through a highly polished set that included some of their own freshly penned numbers, along with several songs selected from their very successful ‘
South of the City’ Album ( produced last year by Greg Haver.)
Their sharp melodies, neurotic lyrics, road rolling percussion and whip cracking bursts of guitar have all helped to establish this band as a
tour de force to be reckoned with on the stage of British blues.
Sounding like the marsh-born sons of the Rolling Stones, their blues based heritage shone through each number on their Burnley set.
Songs like ‘Save Me’ - shot into the crowd with a glossy cool, clear-headed deliverance, laced with passionate vocals from Paul Muir and resplendent with razor-sharp hooks of guitar from Paul Turley. With haunting rhythms produced by Damien Campbell on drums and Billy Dedman on bass, this soon had the crowd clapping along.
Albany Down’s stage presentation is more elegant than a city-boys crisply starched shirt. And as sure as a chancellors swagger. You never feel that the music goes it’s own way. It is always tightly reigned in. And is constantly refined by these clever musicians.
Finishing off the set with their highly accomplished ‘South of the City’ number, with its sweaty, hazy summery-blues heat, and those mosquito stinging lyrics ... adorned with a gloriously serpentine bottle-neck guitar finale, this song suitably topped off a magnificent show for the band .... scoring them a hit with the blues fans at Burnley .... and preparing the ground for Jimmie and his famous Tilt a Whirl.
© Neil_Mach May 2012
Links:
http://www.facebook.com/albanydown
http://burnleyrockandblues.co.uk/
There is an extraordinary line on ‘Glory Days’, the poignant, rousing centre-piece of Karima Francis’s album, ‘The Remedy’, that tells the audience, in just a few words, where the Blackpool singer-songwriter is coming from. “They are weak but strong,” she sings, “Who fail but carry on.”
