New Music 2017 - Part 10 - Rebecca Downes - BeLive

My liking for, and the revival in fortunes of, the live album is something that I have mentioned in the past. Few are more welcome or rewarding than this.

Rebecca Downes - BeLive (Mad Hat Records, 27 January 2017.)

I have seen Rebecca Downes live a few times and she and her band are always top of their game. The studio CDs are good, really good, but live there is just a whole new dimension. For want of a better one that word is tension - you discover that the power she sings with is far away from some studio-created phenomenon.
Rebecca Downes was voted 'Best Emerging Artist' and 'Best Female Vocalist' at the British Blues Awards 2016 and this thirteen-track recording, that includes a few covers as well as many of the band's own songs, is where you get to find out why. Nothing, of course, is a substitute for attending a live gig.

Cheese & Grain, Frome, 8 May 2016.

New Music 2016 - Part 16 - Half Deaf Clatch - The Life and Death of A.J Rail

I was sure that I had mentioned this before but it seems not. If I have then I'm simply going to do it again.
Sometimes it takes a really shit and needlessly frustrating day to make one realise just how important music is. And how healing it might prove to be. I had some ideas earlier this week about writing another "virtual trip in music" as the first amused me in the making and I now have several itineraries in mind.

Tonight however is the time for this, and simply this...

Half Deaf Clatch - The Life and Death of A.J Rail (2015, self-released).

I saw Half Deaf Clatch play live in Frome at an intimate gig last year and it rates amongst the best performances I saw all year. Great clawhammer banjo blues and slide guitar, without any ornamentation, combined with his gritty vocals and earthy songs.

I'm too frazzled to write a detailed review just now. On the other hand I'm delighted to see that I wasn't the only one to be so impressed. This (in English) is one such from across the water courtesy of Blues Magazine in the Netherlands.

Here, with archive video from the US Signal Corps that will be familiar in essence to some in the UK during the winter now ending, is the song '1927 Flood' taken from the above-mentioned album.

Half Deaf Clatch is very much on my list of artists to see live again and his other recordings are well worth searching out too. It just so happens that the artist comes from Hull, UK.

Note added 11 May 2016:
The Life and Death of A.J Rail is now one of the British Blues Awards 2016 finalists in the category 'Blues Album'.