Monday, 29 June 2020

Ryan Perry - High Risk, Low Reward, album review


Blues Exploration

This is a fine blues album, aptly slick at times in the Robert Cray mode of things, Perry having his own identifiable silk in the playing, and a strong vocal, but there is also plenty of funk and riffs throughout to play it gutsy as well.

There are quick riffs binding a song together as in One Thing’s for Certain [with neat harmonies on the chorus], and this also has a slowdown moment with guitar and bass that delights; opener Ain’t Afraid to Eat Alone has a long guitar setter to establish the blues prowess as smoothly grooved; on B.B. King’s Why I Sing the Blues has Perry letting a little loose too, and a favourite is the genuinely funked Homesick where the riff is tightly blunt, the staccato tempos controlled to perfection by Roger Inniss on bass and Lucy Piper on drums.

The title track and the closer Hard Times play it in the blues of a swamp heat, especially the fuzzed haze of the latter, and here are the true guts in a band that can also play it sweet – this wonderful dynamics of the blues if you are prepared to explore. 


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