Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
A writer, a poet or the scribe of combined lyrics and sweated out notes should never stop searching for a truth, should never allow the music that floats in their head to become stifled or desolate, to become as barren and featureless as the deserts or as bland as deep black space when there is no cosmos to stare in open-mouthed wonder at. The music should never be seen as suffocating or unbearable to be around, it should never consume to the point of being bled dry and if does, if it should manage to challenge this and win through, then it is time to either call it a day or walk away for a while and regroup.
For Kim Simmonds and Savoy Brown, the word stifling only enters the dictionary as a gathering point between star and stunning and the welcome to the Blues genre that the songs from the new album have made is intense, almost verging on the beautifully uncontrollable and the sense of the cool that is thrust into the limelight is to be believed as one believes in the singular truth that carries a person’s being through life.
The Devil To Pay might be a tough credit account to keep in the black, but the blues always finds a way to keep the balance from entering the red, and certainly since the start of the turn of the century, that balance has crept ever higher and not found its way into the recession of disturbing insipid Blues. The Devil To Pay is no Faustian Pact either by either the band or Kim Simmonds, this is just the accumulation of great musicianship made honest and real and with the knowledge that the tracks on the album are as good as anything laid down before them.
Songs such as Bad Weather Brewing, the sincerity that resonates in Grew Up In The Blues, Stop Throwing Your Love Around and the reversal of gender stereotypes in the culture of drinking in Whiskey Headed Baby all combine to give the devil his due but also stir up such emotion in the angels that the Blues knows that it lives and breathes still as the 21st Century progresses ever onwards.
The mischievous spirit lives on, the Devil plays unheard sax in the background and the tune is enough to keep on rocking, The Devil To Pay grins with healthy roguish charm.
Ian D. Hall