Joanne Shaw Taylor: White Sugar - 2009

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Joanne Shaw Taylor is from Wednesbury in the West Midlands, not from the Mississippi Delta, would you believe

This, her assured debut album from 2009, is certainly an impressive offering of earthy blues rock. Compared to 2014’s comparatively “in your face” all out, bombastic blues rock guitar and throaty voice attack of The Dirty Truth, this is a slightly more subtle affair. 

The bass is certainly more inventive and melodious and some of Joanne’s guitar work is stunning, such as the outstanding solo on White Sugar, and on Time Has Come for that matter. 

Tracks like Kiss The Ground Goodbye and Just Another Word have the requisite blues power but they also have a warm, appealing melodiousness that is lost in the more edgy, more outright “rockier” material that features on the later albums like the afore-mentioned The Dirty Truth and the barnstorming Reckless Heart. 

Even an all out slow burning rocker like Watch 'Em Burn has a tuneful bass underpin to it. Everything is pretty much perfect on this breathtaking debut. As with most blues rock material, there is not a huge amount of variation, either musically or lyrically. You don’t suddenly get a funk number or a piano ballad or some vaudeville, (as on a Queen or Paul McCartney album). What you get is honest, straight down the middle blues rock.

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