Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The great Joe Cocker may no longer be with us but the woman who breaks as many hearts and sounds as outstanding as him, especially when in full flight, is very much becoming a huge part of the British Blues scene.

The Storm Inside, both as the artists playing the music and their new album itself, is so full of tension, the bleak look at loneliness juxtaposed with the yearning of sacrifice and the desire to be held close is so engrained into the Little Devils line up that the voice of Yoka resonates across each song as if Time itself is under pressure to acknowledge just how storming this woman is.

This fourth album from the Little Devils is the first to have the current line up swell the depths of the music as a cohesive; almost chaos defying unit, and it is a first that should be celebrated with passion, the same undeniable passion that sits happily but with the strange melancholic sadness that is found when a voice speaks from the absolute bottom and comes crashing, bruising, brushing aside all who lay before her, raging to the point of exuberance, like feel in which Yoka manages from the very first heart-beat.

The Blues, the domain of the great and the good and Little Devils certainly enjoy their time in that company and in tracks such as the opening and aptly titled Storm Warning, the graciously abundant The Birth of The Blues, the beauty of The Ghost of Your Kiss, I Still Want It Back and the hysteria the fundamental truth that sits in My Perfect You the ranks of that company is swelled, optimistically charmed and given over to the near idealistic; this is a serious album for serious lovers of the genre but with no pretensions to suggest that nobody else can join in the splendour on offer.

The Storm Inside rages with kind authority, it asks questions and gives straight answers, ultimately it is the deliverance of Yoka to the main stage that makes it brutally adept and punishingly wonderful. The Storm Inside is an album of great distinction.

Ian D. Hall