Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Six albums down the line and Micke Bjorklof & Blue Strip Ain’t Bad Yet, and listening to the new offering from the Finnish Royal Blues family, there is no reason to ever believe that they would ever have that moniker attached to them.
Ain’t Bad Yet is an album of great masculine sensitivity but with that hugely desired effect in Blues, one of sheer guts and magnitude, enough of the former to deliver yet another sharply focused piece of writing, more than plenty in the latter to hold the responsibility along with many of the bands Nordic neighbours of keeping the Scandinavian music renaissance of the last decade going and in style.
For a band to go so long without a change in its line-up, enforced or just to shake loose the dust which tends to gravitate around a Blues machine when the years roll past in a down-field way, is engaging to the point of craving, a well oiled machine after all needs careful attention; that attention to detail and to the needs of the band is everywhere in the recording and it hums with the geniality of a sage being taught something new.
For Micke Bjorklof, Lefty Leppanens, Teenu Vuorela, Seppo Noulikoski and Timo Roiko-Jokelas, the time that has elapsed has only served as notice that the unit is as high functioning and as enjoyable to play in as it ever was.
Undeniably Blues suffered the death of a thousand blown notes as the 20th Century ground on and it really is only in the last 15 to 20 years that it finally made its slow recovery where it wasn’t to be seen as a pastiche of its self. This melancholy Blues wasn’t only confined to the single genre, it got hold of Jazz as well but Blues seemed to really feel the brunt force of the lead piping across the back of the palms and the repeated smack of disdain from a younger, perhaps more adventurous audience.
Thanks to bands such as Micke Bjorklof & Blue Strip, the outside nations, those not normally associated with the big epics of Blues, have fed the way for the rest to catch up and in tracks such as Rain in Jerusalem, Rat Chase, Sweet Dream’s A Sweet Dream and the excellent Blame It On The Bright Lights, that essence is there and it flourishes great fruit, an abundance of great quality Blues that offers the listener a bridge between the generations to be enthused and discuss the future over.
Ain’t Bad Yet is an album that may have carried the day when Blues was a bloated animal, one that was either going to recover or sink completely into Time’s back pocket, it might have given it breath and oxygen to keep going, thankfully it is perhaps preferable to think of it as yet another great addition to the 21st Century Blues cannon, one in which is far more relevant to the interesting times we find ourselves in.
Ian D. Hall