JJ Grey & Mofro
Album: This River
Label: Proper
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.jjgrey.com

For all the feel of Louisiana swamp pop/funk that reaches into the Southern rock of JJ Grey & Mofro and album number seven, "This River", you can't help but feel there's also something of a more British blues touch there as well. Then the synaptic nerves kick in and the answer may well have something to do with a half remembered outfit, Mofro Lives In London who frequented at venues such as Ronnie Scotts.

Now whist that may have been more than a little while ago, you can feel the echos in amongst the horns and funk that sit in with the rough powerhouse blues. More importantly I think you can hear it in the prose. "This River" is very much a story album, not just an emotional rendition of love found and lost, this is an album populated, with people, places and events.

JJ Grey is an observer, a documenter, a man that can take a chapter of a life and distil it down to four and a bit minutes of storytime. At times it's as southern as grits and Nascar, out there on the edge, sometimes not even sure if the tyres are going to hold or send the whole smoking mass straight into the wall, when this gets emotional it reminds you why they call it the blues.

"This River" is an album that takes you on journey through a series of vignettes, sometimes the brassic couple sharing a cup of coffee and a donut in a diner staring lovingly into each other's eyes because that's all they have together, sometimes it's just watching the weather and the influence it has on people, sometimes it feels like a documentary reaching into the dark underbelly, at all times it feels like it has focus, that songs and music matter.

JJ Grey & Mofro have an album that has that sweaty, party feel, one you can get up and dance to as easily as you can stay sat at your table drinking your cold beer. There' also a rumour, just a rumour mind, that they might be bringing it over here later in the year.

Neil King