Joe Bonamassa
Black Rock

Black Rock, black rock: a place in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, or New Mexico? Or perhaps that stone guarded, visited, and revered in the sacred mosque of Mecca?

No. It's the name given to a recording studio, with an adjoining villa with six residential rooms, created by a Greek music entrepreneur on the island of Santorini. The studio had opened in 2009, and Bonamassa rushed there shortly after to record his eighth album. In fact, here on the cover, turned pitch black, is a photo of the part of Santorini facing the studio windows, an extraordinary place if you make the effort to consider it with its natural colors.

The island and the studio are Greek, but the music of the album is still strictly Anglo-Saxon: that mix of blues, rock, soul, and folk based on old stories of inspired African Americans from almost a century ago, but heavily filtered by the added value brought by the English revisitation of such abundance in the sixties and seventies; and thus full of those European, or at least British, moods that allowed it to gain strength and variety and explode worldwide thanks to a myriad of great names, first and foremost Beatles, Stones, Who, Cream.

No concessions, therefore, from Joe to the local folklore. He and his entourage were there because the place is supremely pleasant, thus combining business with a bit of pleasure. Besides, Bonamassa descends from all Italian grandparents, so he somewhat embodies the saying "una faccia, una razza" (one face, one race).

This collection of thirteen songs, five of his plus eight covers, stands just like many other previous and subsequent ones (we're still in 2010 here) in his discography. He sings better and better, plays better and better, gets produced better and better, composes quite decently, and above all, rearranges and reinterprets others' pieces decisively to his style, so much so that when listening, it's hard to tell if a piece is his, or instead belongs to some guy who lived maybe eighty years ago.

This time, he celebrates the usual Jeff Beck Group ("Spanish Boots"), Bobby Parker, John Hiatt, an unexpected Leonard Cohen ("Bird On a Wire"), Otis Rush, Willie Nelson (with the old B.B. King still alive and a guest, dueling with vibrato blows), James Clark, and Blind Boy Fuller.

Bonamassa the encyclopedist. Bonamassa the communicator. Bonamassa the recycler. Bonamassa who would give an arm to have been born (to be clear, in London and not in the state of New York), in 1947 and not in '77, when all the musical games of his interest were already done. He stands out because he is passionate, fiery, skilled without the slightest virtuoso pose. When there is a need to race on the keyboard, he does it, but most of the time he plays what needs to be played, with perfect sound despite its extreme variety (dozens of guitars and amplifiers are considered for each of his works).

Another four stars, come on...