This is the kind of music that's best enjoyed in its raw form, preferably in a live context – but until you get to see Landreth in your local venue, this is the next best thing.

Bound by The Blues
Sonny Landreth
www.sonnylandreth.com
Provogue / Mascott Label Group
10 tracks 41:32

After a more-or-less three year break Sonny Landreth returns with a fine studio outing. Bound By The Blues is a virtual Delta blues sampler, featuring standards, originals, and a couple of instrumental tracks. Landreth, sometimes called 'the King of Slydeco,” combines stylistic influences that reach beyond blues and into country, zydeco, and rock - always lending his tasty and unique slide technique, which incorporates a good amount of picking behind the glass tube.

The guitarist, born in Mississippi, can best be compared to Britain's Bryn Haworth, another legendary slide player. Even the vocal tone of the two men – both fine vocalists in their own right – is similar, but with Landreth having the grittier approach, both vocally and in his playing.

Bound By The Blues starts out with a straight-ahead solid blues-rocker, Robert Johnson's “Walkin' Blues,” then adds a National Steel guitar to the heavy, muscular title-track, before settling into more of a country-blues feeling with “The High Side.” “It Hurts Me Too” is a low-down, slow, steaming basic blues piece and precedes the more introspective, sophisticated “Where They Will.” Those who like their blues hard and funky will enjoy “Cherry Ball Blues,” and if you like a good instrumental jam, “Firebird Blues,” which is dedicated to the late Jonny Winter is exactly what you're looking for. “Dust My Broom” is a classic blues shuffle, and is followed by “Key to The Highway” where Landreth stretches a bit and uses some unusual, experimental, sometimes risky guitar technique, bringing new life to this often-covered song. The rocking “Simcoe Street,” a rockin' instrumental, closes the album.

Landreth and his band are solid players, sounding comfortable in their musical environment and well able to deliver the goods without the too-often expected blues-rock histrionics. Landreth's guitar cries as often as it screams.

Landreth and Tony Daigle co-produced the album in a no-frills approach that lets the music do the talking – a good choice, since this is the kind of music that's best enjoyed in its raw form, preferably in a live context – but until you get to see Landreth in your local venue, this is the next best thing.

Bert Saraco
www.facebook.com/express.image

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