Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
You can be forgiven for thinking that the future means insulting the past, it is a way of habit across the board in today’s society, perhaps one that has found the throw away culture a little too meaningful, one that perhaps sees previous moments of exceptionalism as nothing more than a jaded reminder of all that is wrong, all that is stereotypical.
In a world that at times doesn’t deserve a richness of expression or the memories which have brought out such artistic finery, we can look to the Masterpiece before us, hanging on the wall in a dimly lit gallery or hidden away from prying eyes in someone’s home, and smile, like the much discussed lady haunting the Italian Renaissance and Leonardo da Vinci’s dreams, enigmatically, simply, a resting pose that means the world is watching and wishing to understand more.
Masterpiece, we wish to shout it to the heavens, and so we should, but we should also acknowledge that the whilst the piece of art we wish to extol the virtues of are grounded in the contemporary, it is with a keen sense of observance that we see the path and guiding hand it has been taken by from the past. Nothing is ever formed without having been influenced by the preceding, certainly not art, definitely not the Blues, and as Albert Castiglia takes root in the listener’s mind, the past is wonderfully, entertainingly, unavoidable.
Not only is the album driven by the thought of the unexpected gift of second chances, the sound is evocative of what made the Blues so dynamic, versatile and expansive in the first place, its golden era one of memory, of sending a message out into the world and carried by the determined currents of the Mississippi, of radio and the willingness to prove a point.
That probing genius is highlighted across the album, but in particular in songs such as I Tried Tall Ya, the exceptional Heavy, Thoughts and Prayers, Too Much Secanol, Catch My Breath, Love Will Win The War and the album’s title track, Masterpiece. It is a feeling of a union explored, unexpected virtue and accomplished history working together as one, and fighting the despair with grace of those who would see the triumph of such acts as folly, personally and politically.
An artistic will co-produced by the superb Mike Zito, Masterpiece is the reflection of an apprenticeship served with honour and an album that is not afraid, rather it demands, to make the past known, to reveal the forgotten and the once unknown without any sense of regret.
Albert Castiglia’s Masterpiece will be released on May 24th via Gulf Coast Records.
Ian D. Hall