Monday, 1 June 2015

Romi Mayes - Devil on Both Shoulders, album review



Genuine Feel

Canadian chanteuse Romi Mayes shoulders the blues devil with plenty of genuine feel on this album, a collection of chug-funking songs with gunslinger support from Jay Nowicki. The title track is a sassy spiel over curt guitar rhythms that break together into the descending chorus, then back to the clipped talk up to that next break. It’s a neat na-na-na-na-na-na of a song. The next two on the album Monkey of a Man and Let You Down rely a little too much on that contemporary vocal affectation of the staccato stutter [though that could be a tautology] but other than those, Mayes can move easily and effectively between raunch and sweetheart, a little of that pained latter on the sad and harmonising blues ballad of Gonna Miss Me; next Bee Sting injects its spunky venom. And you know, she can do a little of Janis, certainly in tone, as in later song Wonder Now. Great stuff.


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