Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Being young is for living and rolling the choppy waters that comes your way. It is for having the spirit of adventure than youth brings and for seeing the world for the beauty it can bring rather than the cold hard, sometimes sterile, scenes that older eyes get too used to. It is for having the ability to be dynamic and electrifying, to be able to stimulate the generation above and to move those coming up behind, youth is not to be wasted sitting round wondering where the next round is coming from. For Eliana Cargnelutti, youth is all about being an Electric Woman.
Electric Woman is Eliana Cargnelutti’s solo debut album and coming just a couple of months after her tremendous contribution to the Girls with Guitars album which Blues Caravan touring partners, Heather Crosse and Sadie Johnson, it is a timely reminder of the sheer expertise that resides in the young woman and the nourishing value of her guitar playing and the role her voice plays in the overall act of musical attainment.
Produced by the excellent Albert Castiglia, the album truly rocks as only the Blues can but like her English contemporary Joanne Shaw Taylor, the sound is that of youthful exuberance, of taking the Blues, letting it reside in the pumping heart but acknowledging that such things do not deserve to detract, nor impact on living without joy for too long.
Aided by Timo Rotten, Roger Inniss, John Ginty and Albert Castiglia, Eliana Cargnelutti’s songs are given the drive of a Ferrari being taken for a spin around Monza with all the conditions being in the car’s favour but with the deftness of touch belonging to a Master in waiting, the glittering trophy surely only Time away. In songs such as the very personal Why Do I Sing The Blues, the counter point to female relationships when one takes the other’s man in I’m A Woman, the sublime There’s Gonna Be Some Rockin’, the superbly apt Soulshine and Freedom, the Italian Blues Queen in waiting places her intent to take her listeners into waters so deep they will need a life preserver, Ms. Cargnelutti is more than on hand though to sweep them up, put them on dry land and ask with grin, if they want to do it again? Why wouldn’t they?
Electric Woman is a high quality debut, full of feminine guile and secretive angst, the young tortured soul but one who oozes confidence at every turn and plays Blues guitar as if she is on a mission to be considered the best that Europe might provide, there is a way to go but this album is a great start.
Eliana Cargnelutti’s Electric Woman is released on April 6th.
Ian D. Hall