Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

British Blues Rock has never seemed healthier. Perhaps it’s the times the nation is living through and experiencing or it may just be because a generation of performers, sick and tired of the same old thing have gone in search of a musical utopia and bought back a message from the past which says this stuff is very cool, why did we ever abandon it?

In Federal Charm, one of the best bands to come out of the Greater Manchester area with the likes of seminal Punk gods Goldblade, the sublime Art-Rock of Elbow and the sheer majesty that encompassed 10cc, the music is swift, punchy, deep down and as dirty as you want to listen to it. It has a confidence that brushes others aside and their self titled album throws convention out of the window and the result is an album that rocks the soul of the listener.

The sound that Nick Bowden, Paul Bowe, L.D Morawski and Danny Rigg have produced is pure elegance with more than a nod to the exuberant and friendly sleaze, the high class meeting the suggestive wink and enjoying the stunning combination. It is a sound that seems far and away from what you might perceive coming out of the Manchester Area, there is no sense of the foray and Mancunian fire that took all before them in the 1990s. The music has a different taste, something grander but with its eyes firmly on delivering great music with a passion and not with a big wide stick.

From the start of Gotta Give It Up through to the final flourish of Too Blind To See, each track moulds itself around a vision of what British Blues Rock should be, crunching, ear splitting and defining from the boots up,  the sudden violent crash of thunder on an ordinary hot summer’s night. Big, brash and utterly beautiful and tracks such as No Money Down, The Stray, Tell Your Friends and There’s A Light  shine greatly and with purpose. Want an album to define British Blues Rock in 2013 then look no further than Federal Charm, package it up and savour every minute, for this is a real deal.

Federal Charm is available to purchase from Mystic Records.

Ian D. Hall