Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
If music be the food of love, then let Cyril Neville forever play on. Cyril Neville is a music legend, a man who makes music sound as deliciously entertaining as it should be heard and whose latest album, Magic Honey, has all the ingredients of a mix of songs that have been well prepared and seasoned to enjoy in only way that the man can.
To call any music irresistible can sometimes be subjective but when the strut, the phenomenal swagger kicks in from the very first track, subjectivity comes off the cooker and allows the notes, the funk and groove the full use of the range and simmers without detachment. Listening to the album is also one of the greatest pleasures in remembering that everyone over a certain age still is very relevant, especially when the music is still of the highest possible quality.
What makes Magic Honey so entertaining is the way Cyril Neville fuses his own particular musical gumbo with uniting forces of Cranston Clements, “Mean” Willie Green, Carl Dufrene and Norman Caesar with superstars such as Dr. John, Mike Zito and the excellent Walter Trout. This infusion, this heady mix of differing styles rolls around the overjoyed and soon overloaded senses and explodes in a way in which taste, an affirmation for the musical palate, can never be disagreed with.
From the sweetness of the album’s title track, Magic Honey, Cyril Neville takes the listener on a musical feast that satisfies more than a free pass to a month’s worth of concerts at The Carnegie Hall. The excellence of Working Man, the mocking beauty of Money and Oil in which the southern part of the U.S.A. will no doubt revel in listening to after the problems that hit the states a couple of years ago, the absolutely cracking and downbeat feel of Another Man and the sensitive sentiment Something’s Got A Hold Of Me all give the recording the maximum possible attention and southern flavour.
Even with the abundance of talent running through the album, this is not a case of too many cooks spoiling the gumbo broth, this a Michelin starred performance in which everybody on the C.D. shines and prepares to serve up something very special.
Magic Honey is released via Ruf Records in September 2013.
Ian D. Hall