Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
We give power to that which makes us understand what drives us and to which can give us nightmares as we live in a waking state of fear and breakdown. This duality of life is to be expected…how we deal with it is where each person’s distinctive command, their circle of friends and lived ones, combine to bring peace to the mind of those caught in the spiral of living half in and half out of their soul for a while as events threaten to overtake them.
To be blessed with another’s power, in the same way that you would share body heat when you and a friend are caught out in freezing temperatures, is to receive strength and purpose, to acknowledge that we can hold all the power we believe we are capable of carrying, and still feel blessed when someone notices that we are in actual fact running on fumes and steam.
It is to the power of the extraordinary Ana Popovic that many have felt comforted by her presence in their lives, and the restorative feminist Blues icon has touched many, given her song to their lives so they may find the strength to continue. That continuation is repaid with honour, for as we all must encounter, so even the icon must endure, and with her own private life having taken serious knocks in the last few years, her own health causing concern, so it is the power of the fan and the musician’s she surrounds herself with that she now feels the same release of other’s Power to stage a searingly cool comeback to the Blues table.
Across tracks such as Luv’n Touch, the excellent Queen Of The Pack, Deep Down, Flicker & Flame, the album opener of Rise Up! and the stirring, balanced, positive belief to be found in the song Strong Taste, the sense of understanding, acceptance, and fierce heart is framed by those who give the Lady of the Blues her own influence and control, luminaires and light givers such as Kenney Wayne Shepherd, Mark Selby, Buthel, and Chris Coleman and from the importance of belief and love from the family outside of the studio, the loved ones who care even when the project of the moment is over.
Power is not to be underestimated, when used for the greater good it is an act that is more than kindness, it is an authoritative act of encouragement and effect; and as Ana Popovic once more leads the Blues to a dance of combustible beauty, so the power is given human emotion of joy and the dispeller of fear. An album of unlimited inspiration, Power, in this case, is truly wielded by the beholder.
Ana Popovic’s Power is out now.
Ian D. Hall