Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There can be no arguing that the city of Birmingham and its suburbs have contributed much to the fabric of Britain, from poetry to industry, Trevor Francis to Dennis Mortimer, Heavy Metal to the works of W.H. Auden and Tolkien, Birmingham has hand in it, even if it imports most of these from other places and like Liverpool cherishes it enough to claim it as their own. Like Heavy Metal though, which is as Midlands as the River Rea or The Sports Argus, a current band of Blues players, the very likeable Brothers Groove, are very much entrenched in the Birmingham ideal and their album Play The Game has that essence of Midland mindful music winding through it.

Play The Game sees the camaraderie of Shaun Hill, Nigel Mellor and Deano Bass in full flow and the sound is something you might have expected to hear in one of the Blues clubs, heaving with interest and the music as good as anything you could have heard oozing out at one point in the Southern States of America. Although American Blues has been the long established peak for the genre, in recent years a new breed of British Blues bands and artist have been not just knocking on the door but getting in a bulldozer and ramming it against the framework. Certainly the superb Joanne Shaw Taylor is regarded rightly as one of the best exponents of the art and she is followed in wonderful tentative steps by Brothers Groove.

Camaraderie is a main stay of any band, if the ties that bind are tight, then the enjoyment of playing together is more natural and Brothers Groove exemplifies this taste of music satisfaction. The Blues may be hard to bare, it might dig deep into your soul and find something missing, something that cannot be filled by music alone but at least it reminds you that there is a hole in your life that needs to tended to and with tracks such as My Guitar, Duty Calls, the superb Another Girl and Will I See You There? the hole gets that little smaller, less likely to wallow in the dirt and in the end revel in some very cool and astonishing guitar work.

The question is would you play the game? If Brothers Groove are in charge of the whistle and the beat then you should strap on your boots and get ready to dive in.

Ian D. Hall