OFFICIAL:
http://chrismurphymusic.com/
Written
by Bradley Johnson, posted by blog admin
Unafraid
of defying the laws of musical genre and drawn to intriguing compositions that
can veer from a blues-soaked downturn to an upbeat 50s rock-a-thon to four on
the floor blues and beyond, songwriter/instrumental mastermind/singer/producer
Chris Murphy drops the latest in his long line of studio recordings, Water Under the Bridge, and it’s a
joyfully wild ride that’s worth taking.
This is Murphy’s first collaboration with the Blind Blake Blues Band and
it’s one that sounds like it could have lasting power for both parties.
The
synergy and symmetry are present throughout the entire album. There are a lot of dynamically stacked
textures, surprisingly varied takes on the band’s influence, and supremely
tight instrumental simpatico and mindful utilization of varying tempos to
maximize the musical fun factor. Plus
once you get this band going, good luck catching them. These cats can play off of each other for
days and it shows on each cut contained on Water
Under the Bridge. Telepathic swerves
on tracks like “Moveable Feast,” “Joan Crawford Dances the Charleston” and “The
Lemon Rag” provides melodies and arrangements that will imprint to your memory
piece by piece, more and more every time you listen to one of them. Whether it be the boogie woogie piano,
alternating acoustic/electric guitar stings, the violin’s tactically unique
approach to tackling different styles or the way the upright bass riffs are as
equally good as any other musician’s performance and worth listening to in
their own right only attests to how good these songs are.
Murphy
(and his stellar, stalwart band, The Blind Blake Blues Band) make it be known
that anything goes on this teamwork based-effort. Everyone just locks onto the blues and rides
every aching, low man’s crest on “Riverboat Blues,” and though there’s a
certain melancholy to this track it never rides the graven image for every long,
if at all and turns the slow motion of tragedy into a really hypnotic,
swaggering little number. “My Spanish
Lover” draws from the obvious Spanish influences and perhaps a touch of the
Latin rock types of influences too. The
mid-tempo meower and growler “Tomcat Blues” smashes out a no-good polecat
rhythms that’s left to roll around in rank rockabilly guitars, taut blues bends
and an all-around snarly rock n’ roll attitude.
Then the album throws another one out of leftfield in the form of closer
“Cheer Up Mickey” where Hendrix’s visionary “sense” if you will if played by
Murphy and his violin/viola over the absolute bare minimum of percussion and no
other accoutrements impeding on Chris’ performance. This piece feels naked, raw and wonderfully
stripped down; yet another one of Murphy’s many sides.
This
is an inventive, exciting album. It’s
very easy to recommend this to anyone you meet because the musicianship is so
tight and the songwriting so infectious that the more tracks that you continue
playing; the deeper you will get caught up in getting sucked into the
experience. For true jazz, blues,
country, rock and folk aficionados, it doesn’t get any better than Chris
Murphy’s Water Under the Bridge.
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