Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There are many acts that record with a certain style, a strut, the swagger of belief and self-confidence and they are of course right too, it is what makes them sound so bold, inviting and immensely enjoyable when playing their music. Perhaps none fit this assuredness, the reliability of self-imposed perfection than Savoy Brown and the man who formed the group Kim Symonds. Coming on the back of the 2011 acclaimed album Voodoo Moon, Kim Simmonds invites the fans on a tour of the soaring Blues and marriage between inventive lyrics and the constant that resides within reinvention in the new album Goin’ To The Delta.

Listening to the album there are moments when you have to catch yourself before the mind starts believe that what you are hearing is some sort of lost recording, an old master found and restored, the luxury of the fundamentals of Blues, as if somebody had gone sneaking around inside Peter Green’s or Eric Clapton’s garden shed or loft with the aim of tidying it for them and pulled out a collection of songs never heard before. That though is just the half of it, for it to sound fresh and exciting, the listener, especially anybody new to the Blues genre and is slowly working their way backwards, that none of the music around today would be half as good without the stamp of authority that Savoy Brown, in any incarnation, brought to the table in 1965.

If it sounds erstwhile but thrilling then it must Savoy Brown, if it sounds deep rooted and rousing then it must be Kim Simmonds and throughout Goin’ To The Delta the love of the past is absolute, the thought of evolving, a wheel continually in motion heading to the source of the inspiration is unconditional.  From the ideal of Chicago Blues in Laura Lee, a beautifully made song that grips the heart in a squeeze of perpetual fondness to tracks such as the instrumental Cobra, the bonding feel of Backstreet Woman to the sense of easy rejection of Sleeping Rough, Goin’ To The Delta is a collection of songs that hold the attention of the listener and takes them on the journey to mid-America, to where the ethos of the band first lay. It’s fair to say the three men on the album hit it completely on the head and have come up trumps.

Goin’ To The Delta is release on February 10th

Ian D. Hall