Santo Spirito Blues - Chris Rea Album Review

Chris Rea

Album Review

One of Middlesbrough's favourite sons, Chris Rea was brought up within a goal-kick's distance of Albert Park, now the site of a statue to another local hero, Brian Clough - magic fingers and magic feet, respectively. Chris now continues his dues-paying testament to his beloved blues; this project, a way ambitious 3-CD and 2-DVD package, is a worthy successor to his colossal 11-CD and DVD Blue Guitars project.

This is a stonker of a guitar-led album - "Dancing My Blues Away" is crude pre-refinery Austin Texas thumping, uplifting balls-to-the-wall boogie where everything, and the rest too, is perfect. "Rock and Roll Tonight" is a most unrelenting power blues celebration of the beauty of our glorious music, a full-blown, get off your backside and dance catalytic bomb. "Never Tie Me Down" goes straight for the jugular from the start, at an irresistible this-is-how you do it pace, Fender Stratocaster bouncing off the don't stop for breath rhythm section - it's a gas.

If the bass-heavy "The Chance of Love" leans a tad towards chart inclinations of old, then 180 degrees away, "Money" is a brave off-kilter, pale light, wee small hours of the morning moody, cool-jazz instrumental from the same Paris arrondissement as Kyle Eastwood's "Metropolitain", that moves, inexplicably, into country duelling guitar - banjo funk. The patient Latino, dance-grooved "Think Like A Woman" is a hypnotic, beguiling lesson in how to write a perfect song, another example of the boy's understanding of, and love for, his blues, from Charlie Patton to Jimi Hendrix. Honestly folks, this is no-brainer - go, get, now.

Peter Innes