Paul Jones’s 12-bar merchants, arguably the ultimate does-what-it-says-on-the-tin combo, have been making blues palatable for a mainstream audience for more than 30 years, but have lost little of the fire of their earliest outings.
One of their greatest strengths is their ability to fashion new self-penned material of such authenticity that you’d think the songs were born in Chicago back in the 1950s.
Tom McGuiness’s My Brother Was A Sailor follows the Little Walter playbook to the letter, Jones’s Suddenly I Like It is imbued with the sleazy grit of classic Muddy Waters, while bassist Gary Fletcher’s That’s My Way takes the soft-brush country-tinged route of Jimmy Reed.
They’re purists but never po-faced about it, unafraid to stick rigidly to a template if the vibe demands it; case in point is I Believe I’m In Love With You, which has no qualms about being a carbon copy of the Fabulous Thunderbirds’ original.