I have been looking forward to today for months and months and months. I've prepared you for this moment and it finally arrives: it's BlueBella Records Day here at Blogcritics!
When I write my Best Music of 2010 column at year's end, I can promise you we'll all look back to this day. Half of my list could come from albums being released today. The four albums being released by Blue Bella have dominated my listening time through the first three months of the year with no slowdown expected any time soon.
Nick Moss - Privileged
Kilborn Alley Blues Band - Better Off Now
Matthew Stubbs - Medford & Main
Cash Box Kings - I-94 Blues
Nick Moss founded Blue Bella Records to release his own music his way. The consistently high quality output of his own career would have made Blue Bella an important player on the blues scene if he continued releasing nothing but his own music, but he didn't. After releasing several of his own albums, Blue Bella began working with other like-minded artists. The early results were fine blues albums from artists who like Moss were firmly schooled in the Chicago blues tradition. Blue Bella had its own musical identity, a rarity in the era of corporate labels who try to offer something for everyone. That identity doesn't undergo a radical change with this quartet of releases but it does broaden, and it does so in part because of the newest record from its founder.
Nick Moss spent years studying the Chicago blues tradition from men who played vital roles in shaping it in the early-to-middle part of the 20th century. The time spent learning the nuances of the Chicago tradition over the course of five studio and two live albums resulted in some of the most satisfying music the idiom has had to offer in ages. By staying true to the form, Moss' growth as an artist — singer, guitarist, songwriter, arranger, producer — was audible but sometimes obscured. Not anymore. On Privileged, Moss takes his sound to new places and distills everything he has learned into the most forceful, direct, confrontational record of his career.
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Article comments
1 - El Bicho
The Stripes album is sweet. Only flaw is it isn't long enough. Can't wait to see the movie
2 - Josh Hathaway
I wish they had included all the songs from the film on the CD and expanded it out to a double CD.
I'd hoped to have all four of the Blue Bella reviews finished but my recent illness has put me behind. I'm going to grind it out and try to get those up this week.