Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Some people will lead you on a merry dance as they implore with hands held out, palms open and a look of sorrow on their face, that they seek Redemption, atonement for all they have caused, for all the desperation they have endured in their life, and whilst you want to believe them, while the tears flow down their faces, you know deep in your heart, it is not release they seek, but attention, their voices and actions giving them away as they strut across the stage.
Redemption is a place where the cold wind blows through the neck of the guitar, where it meets with the frosty gaze of deliverance in waiting, redemption in the soul of the honest and sincere is a place where the humble will rub shoulders with the down and outs, where those that are looking for forgiveness will trade-in their lives for recovery. Redemption is perhaps something we all seek in the end and the liberation that comes with it, we might not even realise we have it within our grasp to ask for such a weighty favour to bestowed upon us, but when it does come you can only surely hope it arrives as a fully-fledged deal and with the music of Joe Bonamassa eagerly playing its tune.
If there is anyone who doesn’t have to ask for such forgiveness of spirit, then it arguably is Joe Bonamassa, the musician who is credited with bringing Blues back into a realm where it is not just popular, but a required experience, a musician who freed the genre from its own swirling demise, who offered a redemption of his own to the blues.
It is redemption though the musician speaks of and across this new album of original songs, the third on the bounce in which he has sank his teeth into, and once again with long-term producer Kevin Shirley at the helm, redemption is what he offers, an escape, the daring rescue from the mundane that searches us out and inflicts pain upon our souls.
If Joe seeks Redemption, then it can only be for the blaze of passion he keeps performing with, the fire in the man’s heart is unstoppable, it is strong, and one that bares all in the face of overwhelming loss and suffering of the mind. In songs such as King Bee Shakedown, Deep In The Blues Again, Self-Inflicted Wounds, The Ghost of Macon Jones, Just ‘Cos You Can Don’t Mean You Should, I’ve Got Some Mind Over What Matters and the album title track Redemption, the deeply personal becomes entwined with stirring notes of recovery, impossible to ignore, heartening to hear and explore.
If one has faith in anything then the sought-after Redemption should be it, an album of magnitude and immense revitalisation, you really wouldn’t expect anything less from the Master of the Blues.
Ian D. Hall