Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Joanne Shaw Taylor simply has nothing to prove, with a simple guitar riff and sultry voice she shows why she’s not just the cream of the Midland’s Blues scene but also one of the finest exponents of the craft this side or any side of the Atlantic Ocean. From her previous scintillating album, Almost Always Never to her first live recording, Songs From The Road, and throughout her career she has made the very most of what she has to offer the wider music world and the outcome has always been nothing short of fantastic.
Joanne Shaw Taylor for many years has exploded the myth that you need to be either American, over 30 or male to truly get the grit of the Blues, to spit out at the convention that to be this good you need to have three so called sacred virtues thrust at your psyche and have the music equivalent of wise men show up at your door and proclaim you anointed the next best thing. What she hasn’t done yet is showcase her songs on a live album for all those not fortunate enough to catch her performances.
The subtle difference between a studio album in which the listener relishes each new word or guitar solo and the hard work of a live undertaking is subjective. For each gig is different, the magic almost impossible to catch twice successfully and in the end the listener may hark back to an earlier gig and wish that above else the artist had been captured at that venue on that particular day. Songs From The Road is joyous, an affair in which Ms. Shaw Taylor’s guitar sings like an angel finding freedom in the arms of the devil and never regretting it for a moment. However it still brings back memories of the face of Blues and appearances at the Robin 2 in Bilston.
No matter how cool the thought of the young woman’s virtuoso performance on this live album, especially on tracks such as the superb Beautifully Broken, the expressive and haunting Diamonds In The Dirt and a rather fantastic version of Jimi Hendrix’s Manic Depression, there will be a small nagging thought that the woman is so good, so immensely talented that she deserves to have been captured in a venue that first saw and heard her unique talent.
A new studio album is always good news, to have though this piece of recording history in your collection will certainly blow away the cobwebs till Joanne Shaw Taylor comes back for more.
Ian D. Hall