Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Sayce, Philip
Label: Warner Bros. Records
Release: 2016
Runtime: 39:48
Rating: 4/5
Philip Sayce, the wunderkind of new-generation blues (originally from Toronto, Canada), started making a name for himself on the international scene very early on. In the second half of the nineties, when he was twenty, Jeff Healey discovered him and invited him into his band. Word about the young prodigy spread fast, and so at the end of 2003 Sayce landed with Mellissa Etheridge, where he stuck it out until the end of the decade before deciding to focus on a solo career. Between 2005 and 2015 he lined up five proper solo studio albums, plus one that mixes originals with covers of the classics by artists who were a game-changing inspiration for his musical development.
Live, Sayce works much like his somewhat older Canadian colleague Pat Travers (well, to be precise, Sayce is actually Welsh) in the format of a hard-hitting power blues trio! The album »Scorched Earth Vol. 1« is the first in a series of announced live releases. It has just seven tracks, but that adds up to forty minutes of music, which is plenty. The recordings come from Sayce’s live show on April 14, 2016 at the Silver Dollar club in Toronto, the city Sayce calls home.
It’s incredible what a Stratocaster guitar can squeeze out. You can tell right away that Sayce is devoted to his Stratocaster. Compare a Stratocaster with a Gibson Les Paul and the difference is clearly audible in the semi-acoustic to totally clean tones. The Stratocaster sounds a lot »softer«. That responsiveness of the instrument and the strings decides the little things, especially the magnification and deepening of the filigree finesse of the fine-mechanical craft of guitar playing, particularly if you articulate the whole thing with tremolo and long »pull off« bends. If not before, you’ll get the full experience in the power-blues ballad Standing Around Crying. The Stratocaster, in other words, gives Sayce the best possible vehicle for passion and feeling. That’s also how the album opens. Right off the bat, the openers Steamroller and Powerful Thing, delivered with an incredible glow of primal sensuality, instantly conjure up a convincing backdrop of a dynamic live show. The band slowly, gradually ramps up the mood and spices things up from the start with an extended jam. These »jam moments« are frequent, which makes sense for a live album of this genre, is practically required and very much welcome, and comes with an element of spontaneity that Sayce’s playing is full of anyway. The intensity of Sayce’s expression is probably best showcased in Out of My Mind (»Influence«, 2014 – RockLine review HERE), where Sayce shows off his many-layered polish and fires off a few dizzyingly fast solo maneuvers, finely balanced with instinctive playing, to which the consistently high-impulse drums and bass add their charms in equal measure (this song is a kind of tribute to the figure and work of Jimi Hendrix).
In the middle, the highly singable, melodic Beautiful takes some of the pressure off the intense glow of all the sonic tonnage generated by the hard-hitting power blues trio led by Sayce. Especially in the chorus, it picks up some pop cosmetics, even a nod to the pioneering days when, say, Hall & Oates »lived and coexisted«. Here Sayce’s mostly rough vocal color, which he uses to »paint« the songs, turns soulfully inviting. The song is a kind of departure from the otherwise standard »burning it down« on this release, which doesn’t mean the album lacks first-class rock dynamite.
What matters most here is Sayce’s focus and his unbridled, innate instinct for keeping the primal sound rudimentary. Production-wise, the sound is practically completely »unfiltered« (it keeps its complete rawness) and so it sounds 100% authentic live. The guitar is incredibly raw, and the album accordingly rings out at times extremely energetic, if not downright eruptive. The performance of A Mystic conjures up this musician’s charisma in the light of absolute unbridled abandon, seething wildness, with a raging, maddened man on the edge of spontaneity, combining in his own kind of expressive foldout the virtuoso mastery of a six-string marvel with incredibly relived vocal sensuality. With it, he also brings an attractive »macho« pose into the whole blues story, that of a sharply drawn man, a crafty »desperado«.
So here we have the first installment of an unbridled power-blues-rock goulash, an electrified bluesy fury, full-throttle, high-octane jam kinetics, all under the command of Sayce’s one-of-a-kind genius. In all its raw, unadulterated, instinctively sensual stance, it leads you quite sincerely into the musical world of this fantastic musician. The wait for the second part of this series of live releases has thus already begun.
Line-up
Philip Sayce – vocals, guitar
Joel Gottschalk – bass
Kiel Feher – drums
Track list
01. Steamroller / Powerful Thing
02. Blues Ain’t Nothing But A Good Woman On My Mind
03. Standing Around Crying / Aberystwyth
04. Beautiful
05. A Mystic
06. Out Of My Mind
07. Alchemy
