Gary Moore
Power of the Blues

The music kicks off with incredible power with the eponymous track, a hard-hitting and orthodox rock'n'roll that starts fast, shifts to mid-tempo, then speeds up again for the finale. "There's a Hole" instead is a semi-slow blues, with a central ballad-like interlude. Over this falls one of his endless, earth-shaking solos—the kind that leaves him needing to change the entire set of strings on his Strat. For the second track, "Tell me Woman", a classic boogie, the old and always effective wah-wah pedal is widely employed—a timeless resource.

"I Can’t Quit You Baby" is precisely the slow blues by Willie Dixon, made famous by the Led Zeppelin version on their first album. Moore doesn't mess around here either, and then moves on to tell us why he plays this kind of music with "That’s Way I Play the Blues", as the title says. An autobiographical blues, therefore, while the following cover, "Evil", again stemming from the seminal Dixon, thunders along with the wah-wah working overtime.

Instead, "Getaway Blues" is one of his own compositions, but truth be told, on this album there's not the slightest difference between original contributions and covers—be it sound, genre, or approach. This is truly a record of straightforward seventies hard blues, with all the experiments and "updates" of previous years swept aside. He goes all in with his personal style and incredible verve, on music as old as the hills, from the first to the last track.

To clarify, "Memory Pain" is by Percy Mayfield, a “gentle” rhythm & blues songwriter, but Gary is not gentle, and his rendition of this song is as earthquaking as ever. No more and no less than the following "Can’t Find My Baby", another exhaustive treatise showing how good music, played with passion, works forever—not just in its own era.

The traditional slow tune in Moore’s style takes its time to appear this time, but it finally arrives in the nick of time, on the tenth and last opportunity. It’s called "Torn Inside" and, this time, Moore doesn’t go overboard—he keeps it within six minutes. Yet again, we find the occasion for him to lament some woman who left him, while bringing back the glory of his melancholy, masterful solos on the Les Paul Standard.

For those who love this guitarist’s version rooted completely in the rock blues tradition, without any variants or influences from other worlds, this fourteenth album from 2004 is one of the most suitable. Highly rétro, with no modern touches, but full of love and talent.