Joe Bonamassa
Sloe Gin

Bonamassa is in great shape on this record. There’s compositional inspiration (in his own pieces… half of them, more or less), thematic variety, a great choice of covers and an intelligent reinterpretation and rearrangement of them. And then there’s a warm feeling, a perfect production that's both raw yet clear, biting yet classy.

The album instantly wins me over with its start, featuring a minor arpeggio on the dobro and a tense and convincing voice over it. I immediately like the heavy and resolute rhythm that starts and stops, starts again and stops once more, and again the piano that comes in the seam of the dobro but then disappears forever, and then an entire orchestra comes in! And the slide solo… this is how you remake other people’s pieces! Even Chris Whitley’s original “Ball Peen Hammer” (1998) was enjoyable to listen to, but the power, the conviction, the drama of this one… And then the added value: the basic riff here is closed with a different chord from the original, but not always… one time yes and one time no! Bonamassa covers and at the same time improves his covers, not always but often, and this is one of the most striking cases.

The exact same situation happens with the second track, a revisitation of the TenYearsAftersiana memory “One of These Days” (album “A Space in Time,” 1972, really beautiful by the way). Joe unleashes his invocations amidst thunderous rhythmic syncopations, more or less as it happened in the original, but then he thinks well to attach to it a deadly instrumental tail. On a chord progression like “Hey Jude”, a dreamlike slide guitar solo takes center stage, with a heavenly sound and fabulous pathos: almost three minutes of sublime rock.

The recurring tribute to Paul Rodgers and therefore to the pleasant things of Free and Bad Company, this time revisits that “Seagull” placed in the debut work of the bad Company (1974): without infamy and without praise, Rodgers sings too well and composes too simplistically to make his covers easy.

Among his compositions, “Dirt in My Pocket” sounds very southern, with that dragged slide guitar and that sweet singing reminiscent of the Allman Brothers, or even better Gov’t Mule. “Around the Bend” instead is almost just acoustic guitar and voice, a country blues bearing splendid feelings of asylum. But the most touching is “Richmond,” which initially goes to break the balls of the Marshall Tucker Band (“Can’t You See,” masterpiece) but earns respect, indeed conquers with its more intimate, exquisite touch, graced also by a suggestive mandolin. The closing track is also electroacoustic, oriental in feel and equipped with tabla, as well as all the resonances and rhythmic crescendos of the case. In fact, it’s named “India.”

Among the somewhat less intriguing covers is the one that gives the album its title, an originally muffled and whispered slow blues that is here inflated by an orchestra and an unconstructive lead guitar. The same doubts also arise for “Another Kind of Love” by John Mayall from 1967, when Clapton had left long ago, and Peter Green was the guitarist... What can I say, Mayall’s blues doesn’t captivate me... he is a great pioneering spreader and organizer, but musically not very ingenious.

Did I get through all of them? No, there’s also “Black Night” which certainly isn’t the one by Deep Purple but a mid-last-century blues by maestro Charlie Brown. Bonamassa chooses on this occasion to pick up one of his Gibson ES-335s (those always on B.B. King, Alvin Lee...) and to lay down a blues fusion solo in a Lee Ritenour style that’s something to behold! No other merit, but for guitarists, it’s more than enough. And finally, “Jelly Roll,” an acoustic blues by the late Knight of the Order of the British Empire John Martyn.

One of Joe Bonamassa's best albums: “Richmond,” “Ball Peen Hammer” and the ending of “One of These Days” are poetry to me: four and a half stars.