Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Small, Lee
Label: Escape Music
Released: 2012
Runtime: 51:15
Rating: 4/5
The excellent British singer Lee Small is best known for his work with Surveillance, the latest incarnation of Shy, and Tom Galley’s project Phenomena. So the waters of AOR and melodic rock instantly come to mind. Lee Small is something special, a vocal oddity. Everything he’s taken on in his career, his vocal delivery has radiated a bit of Glenn Hughes through his vocal charisma. In just the right dose, of course. He never overdid this vocal trait, otherwise the melodic rock formula would have had a hard time stomaching so much soulful blackness.
It was only a matter of time before Small would go solo and »explode«, giving his voice a full run-up so he could fly wherever his heart desired. »Jamaica Inn« is therefore a hard-hitting blues rock album, with strong pillars of funk and soul (all the way to Motown witchcraft). It’s incredible but true that on this album you’d have no trouble finding a place and inspiration for the giants of this musical scene, from Joe Bonamassa and Richie Kotzen to even Stevie Salas (the funk-thickened Waiting For A Hangman),… Of course, Lee Small isn’t Glenn Hughes, and he doesn’t have the flourishing financial backing Glenn does, so he can’t afford the biggest guitar aces in the world to play on his album. Instead, he gathered a team of experienced studio workaholics around him, who also have remarkable flexibility and a deep, multilayered understanding of music. Like chameleons, they can adapt to whatever genre challenge comes their way. You could say that with »Jamaica Inn« Black Country Communion got themselves a disowned brother, quietly wandering somewhere in the shadow of his older sibling’s fame. And so it will always remain.
Take Black Bess and/or Shine A Light, which in their lead guitar phrases astonishingly veer toward something that could easily have grown in Richie Kotzen’s own »backyard«. Dead Man Walking is something that could have turned up in the golden days of Free albums. Small’s sailing through the history of classic rock, steeped in the eroticism of blues rhetoric, is incredibly well done. That said, this is first and foremost an album for fans of Glenn Hughes’s music, since most of the attention is of course focused on Lee Small’s vocal interpretation. He’s outstanding in his soul excursions and in breathtaking acrobatics of vocal improvisation that seem to have no end on this album. The vocalist is a sensitive chameleon for whom bringing the meaning of the lyrics to life is as light as a feather, so don’t be surprised if his work gives you goosebumps. Despite Glenn Hughes being all over this album, with Small even playing bass guitar (just like his great idol), if I had to pick the one track where Small most worthily steps into Glenn Hughes’s big shoes, it would definitely be Voyager. Here Small unleashes his vocal maximum in all its yearning sensitivity.
The album has a nicely organic weave of sonic collages from its basic building blocks, and with this production approach Lee Small’s vocal performance shines at its brightest. Above all, the thick rhythmic weight of resonant but never rushed drums and the pulsing »groove« of the bass guitar are generously emphasized. Martin Kronlund, who also leads Gypsy Rose (with vocalist David Reece, perhaps known to some of you for his contribution to the German band Accept, collaborating with him there), a band with little in common with blues music, is clearly extremely receptive to this kind of old-school production approach too, one that demands full authenticity with as few corrections as possible, or none at all. I’ll allow myself to say that the cover of the Boys To Men hit »End Of The Road« and the Kansas gag on accordion called The Renegade Accordion Player are one move too many for the album, since the original material maintains such outstanding quality that it needs no further validation.
»Jamaica Inn« is thus an album of surprises, though not an unexpected one, at least not for anyone who knows who Lee Small is. A pleasant surprise of an album, and one for true Glenn Hughes fans. That means Glenn Hughes from the Trapeze days and his rich solo career to his work in Black Country Communion. Don’t try to run from that, otherwise you’ll never make friends with this album.
Lineup
Lee Small – vocals, bass guitar
Martin Kronlund – guitar
Carl Anthony Wright – guitar
Des Sherwood – guitar
Paul Bradder – keyboards
Imre Daun – drums
Production
Martin Kronlund
Tracklist
1. Jamaica Inn
2. The Captain’s Quarters
3. Black Bess
4. Walk The Plank
5. Shine A Light
6. Dead Man Walking
7. Voyager
8. I Am The Sea
9. Smuggler’s Blues
10. Waiting For The Hangman
11. End Of The Road
12. The Renegade Accordian Player
