It might be just me, but I don’t judge music on the voracity of the back story of the artist, just on the simple criteria of “Is the music any good?”
And in the case of Seasick Steve, it always is.
“A Trip A Stumble A Fall Down On Your Knees” not for nothing starts with “Move To The Country” and surveys the modern world, suggesting we ditch technology as we’re “caught in a web of their design”.
What Seasick Steve does has little to do with the modern world. “Internet Cowboys” rails against online idiocy again (so good he did it twice, you might say?) and his playing is superb.
He goes back a way with this stuff. As if to prove it, the horn-drenched blues of “San Francisco Sound” was started over 50 years ago (and indeed, the timeless sounds it has, go back way further than that).
The title track has a little soul about it, and it might be that there’s a little more soul about the collection as a whole than usual, the sax here is stunning. There’s even a tinge of reggae about “This Way”.
“Backbone Slip” is more the classic, primal blues that you’d associate with him, though, and “Let The Music Talk” will sound superb when he plays it live – and he will.
It is perhaps incongruous that a record that seems to be about solitude sounds as warm and welcoming as it does, “You Don’t Know” does its best to revel on its own, but sounds so catchy you’re sucked in anyway, “Funky Music” does what it says on the stompbox, while “Cryin’ Out Loud” makes good on Steve’s worship of bands like Sly and the Family Stone.
Given that I have to confess to not being the biggest lover of soul music, “….Knees” is more to my tastes when it does the bluesier stuff, ironically like “Soul Food” and the beautiful acoustics and mournful harmonica of the closing “Elisabeth” are perhaps the best of the lot.
Steve reckons that the album was a mistake, that they just sort of happened across it. Given the start of his career wasn’t supposed to happen either, then maybe that’s just fine.
18 years on from that explosion on Jools Holland Seasick Steve remains a captivating and interesting artist.
Rating 7.5/10
