Label: earMUSIC Records
Release date: May 27, 2022
Production: Simon McBride
Album length: 45.57 min
Genre: Hard Rock / Blues Rock
Rating: 9.0/10
He’s Irish, but he’s neither Rory Gallagher nor Gary Moore. He’s a bit younger than Joe Bonamassa, yet not even half as well known or popular as Smokin’ Joe. He’s the guy who, at barely sixteen, replaced fellow Irishman Vivian Campbell in Sweet Savage after Campbell landed a gig with Def Leppard in 1996, and the musician Deep Purple frontman Ian Gillan calls the best guitarist in the world. In recent years he’s been filling in for Micky Moody in Snakecharmer, and he’s also known as Deep Purple’s “reserve player,” since he’s subbing for Steve Morse on the band’s current tour. Ladies and gentlemen, Simon McBride, who dropped his new solo studio album “Fighter” at the end of this past May.
With “Fighter,” Simon McBride returns to the solo spotlight after a long break. Quite a bit of water has flowed under the bridge since his previous three albums, “Rich Man Falling” (2008), “Since Then” (2010) and “Crossing The Line” (2012). A ten-year gap, though, also means a hell of a lot of ideas had time to pile up.
“Fighter” is a phenomenal batch of brand-new Simon McBride originals, this time with no covers. The man gets better with every record, both as a songwriter and as an arranger. “Fighter” is another exceptionally polished piece of work from a seasoned guitar virtuoso who shamelessly shines on vocals too. The new album has a wonderfully organic backbone: it sounds live, full and about as lavish as it gets sonically, like it was made for the stage. It blends blues rock, old tricks from the school of seventies rock and moments of proud sophistication, through which McBride weaves open pop elements into his eclectic musical alphabet. “Fighter” is a powerhouse rock album, and on top of all its smartly crafted songwriting it’s graced by McBride’s giant soloing, with which he walks more than convincingly in the footsteps of the mighty blues rock legacy left behind by his late countrymen, the aforementioned Gary Moore and Rory Gallagher. If nothing else has convinced you by then, King Of The Hill, placed in the second half of the record, says it all. That opening solo especially. It’s a track that, had Bonamassa or someone like Kenny Wayne Shepherd written it, would have snagged a Grammy for best blues rock song of the year.
“Fighter” is a varied album. The opening Don’t Dare has a bit of that internalized Led Zeppelin allure, Kashmir-style, in its lead phrase, and you can’t escape it especially in the closing stretch, where that same phrase carries the song to an atmospheric climax. The album has spots where the guitar phrasing takes center stage in a fat, glowing wall of sound, which will be more than appealing to anyone familiar with Joe Bonamassa’s approach, since he never skimps on decibels and distortion. King Of The Hill and the title track are like that. Then there are the moments that make a listener’s heart bend and melt, like the intense atmosphere and yearning melancholy developed in the phenomenal “blues rock ballads” Show Me How To Love and Let Me Go, both blessed with hugely musical, infectiously inviting choruses. You’ll find more of the traditional blues school in 100 Days. There are also some powerfully driving moments with serious musical bounce, whose guitar passages should go down well even with fans of Richie Kotzen, as you can hear in Back To You and High Stakes. Both tracks, again, are marked by hooky, grabby choruses. The closing The Stealer could very likely have become a big hit for the legendary Free in some other era. A brilliant finale, with the rhythm solidly cemented by a “cowbell,” not to mention yet another breathtaking McBride soloing show.
McBride goes about it in a very traditional way. He does the bulk of everything on “Fighter” himself, on vocals and, of course, on guitar. Over the years he’s grown into a very good singer. Still, the guitar definitely has the final word on this album. The sharp songwriting really catches fire thanks to the foundation laid by the bass, drums and Hammond, which means Simon McBride has surrounded himself with top-notch players who each know their role, and the sheer power and bite of blues rock, which the crew delivers almost like a live show, is fully capitalized on this way. McBride makes the most of the transitions, passages, intros and outros, dropping sparkling guitar ornaments into them, which wins him a victorious poker hand of aces in keeping the dynamics of the whole album highly vibrant. In that sense “Fighter” is an incredibly fascinating record. It never lacks drive or substance for a second, and at the same time it’s craftily loaded with sharpness and bursts of serious speed, as well as with sophisticated parts that demand softness and delicate fine-tuned touch from a guitarist. The atmosphere has its darker moments, but thanks above all to the singable choruses, the album unfolds elsewhere with a playful, even lucid and definitely positive feel. So it’s a blues rock album that crawls into your ear, even though, given how polished and varied it is, and all the little extras packed in, making it demanded total focus and serious dedication from McBride.
With his new studio album “Fighter,” Simon McBride proves he keeps maturing and growing as a songwriter. “Fighter” is a new stop on the evolutionary road of this exceptional blues guitar virtuoso, and with it McBride sets himself a new high standard that he’ll try to top in the future, or at the very least maintain. In one word: “Fighter” is a seriously beautiful blues rock album for a new era.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Don’t Dare
2. Show Me How to Love
3. Kingdoms
4. The Fighter
5. High Stakes
6. Let Me Go
7. 100 Days
8. King of The Hill
9. Just Takes Time
10. Trouble
11. Back to You
12. The Stealer
Lineup:
Simon McBride – vocals, guitar, backing vocals
Dave Marks – bass
Marty McCloskey – drums
