Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
To feel warm and comfortable in the presence of an album is to have a simple realisation thrust down the ears that not everything in life has to have a secret meaning but it at least must have desire, it must be able to be embraced and found to succumb to the one beautiful moment that keeps all in the same boundary of existence; the ability to smile.
The resonance that is offered with the beaming grin of a man being offered a chocolate éclair in one hand and a glass of full bloodied Napoleon Brandy in the other comes across with simple sincerity from the Blues/Rock/Folk cross over band Cotton Belly’s in their new album Rainy Road
Rainy Roads are never to be dismissed; they are never to be seen as offering nothing but boredom and the stuttering silence of gloom. Instead they should be seen as an opportunity, the chance to see the world through the gloom, that nature should be respected and admired but also that cycle of humanity must and should prevail with the grace of humour thrust in between the darkest of clouds.
Yann Malek, Jérôme Perraut, Christophe Etienne and Alexandre Charoy take the Blues and dusts it down with a clean chamois leather, adds the joy to be found in lyric writing and the combination leads to an arrangements of songs that are clever, intelligent and boundless in their scope. Unhindered by convention, unopposed by only ever straying their own music influence within the straight jacket of one genre, Cotton Belly’s own Gaelic charm is full on and in songs such as the gargantuan Sobad, Wrong, the cool of My Friend, Hard Times and the stunning combined twins of Tick Tock A.M and Tick Tock P.M. that charm is infectious and wanders into the realms of groovy.
Rainy Road is the 100 Acre Wood of music, it is inhabited by the good, the cool and the sentimentally profound and throughout it all Cotton Belly’s performance remains elegant and powerful; a rambunctious joy and a wide smile, it is all that is needed to make the path to a Rainy Road memorable.
Ian D. Hall