Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The sound of the authentic is enough to drive you wild, it can certainly stir the heart strings and play deference to life as it life itself becomes rich and balanced for it; authentic never means toeing a line built by others but it does mean that those preaching it from their soul are genuine, dependable and full of truth, whether you wish to hear it or not.
One of the most genuine to come across this year is the return of Kyla Brox, the women of the deep passion and reliable music encounter, and she returns after a seven year wait to throw the forces of dogmatic insincerity, of puppet values, out on their collective and painful ear. In Throw Away Your Blues Kyla Brox shows just how much we have become modern slaves to Time and other’s demands upon it, not even those we love and cherish but those who believe that if you are doing something creative then you are not being productive. To those that consider art as nothing more an end product in which to sneer at, Kyla Brox shows them more than a few well placed fingers, she gives the Blues and Soul its meaning back.
Throw Away Your Blues is not just authentic, it is the release of pressure that the void holds on too with sweat and greasy filthy grasp, it is the release of wanting to hear the Blues and Soul played out in harmony and desirable fashion and if that is not the most valid reason to hear the album then somewhere along the line you have lost the edge of faith that music can supply; breathe in Ms. Brox’s words, feel the energy between the lyric and the guitar of Paul Farr, for surely the temptation of authenticity will reinvigorate the soul.
In tracks such as Lifting The Blues, the wonderful When We’re Alone, the truth of interference and other’s demands on your day in Ain’t Got The Time, Songs For The Lonely and the punch of 365, what Ms. Brox offers is symbolic charm, of the grasp of taking back control over your own life and it is an album that suggests with force that the listener should do the same, that they should seize the time available to do something constructive, that Time in all its aggressive behaviour can be tamed, if not ever beaten.
A fantastic return, one that really captures the spirit of the time; Throw Away Your Blues but never forget the music that can set you free.
Ian D. Hall