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Acoustic blues, acoustic guitar, folk, singer-songwriter, United Kingdom.

For Sunjay Brayne this album marks a pivotal point in his career as he finally reaches the end of an ill-advised publishing deal. Unless you have heard Sunjay perform live you probably won’t have heard his own songs – he’s sung the blues, played Buddy Holly on stage and now pays tribute to his earliest influence, Chris Smither. Smither is an American singer/songwriter/guitarist rooted in the blues and Sunjay releases I’m Just Like You on November 11th to mark his 80th birthday.

The fifteen tracks here span Smither’s whole career from 1970’s I’m A Stranger Too!, the record that gave Sunjay his album’s title. He opens with ‘Link Of Chain’, also released as a single, a rocky uptempo happy blues. Sunjay’s intention was to remain as true to the originals as possible so his band includes Lee Southall on harmonica and Jonny Henderson on keyboards with Katriona Gilmore on fiddle and joining Charlie Barker on backing vocals. Co-producer Josh Clark plays bass.

Smither uses the blues form but is also a clever and literate song-writer as demonstrated on the second track, ‘No Love Today’, which employs the image of a vegetable farmer and must be the only song ever to include the word “okra”. The best-known song is probably ‘Love You Like A Man’, up next, which was covered by Bonnie Raitt and is a real hard rocking blues. The juxtaposition of these two tracks points up the breadth of Smither’s writing.

Another contrasting pair is ‘Father’s Day’ followed by ‘Up On The Lowdown’, the latter giving Sunjay to show off his guitar playing. ‘Rosalie’ is such a great song that I had to play it twice; part sort-of love song, part country blues with hints of Johnny Cash and with the catchiest melody you could wish to hear. ‘Small Revelations’ turns its back on the blues and again Sunjay gets to explore his guitar again. It’s a beautiful, thoughtful song and it’s followed by the bouncy blues of ‘Open Up’. It sounds as though there’s a banjo in there but it’s an illusion.

‘Don’t Call Me Stranger’ is where it all started for both Smither and Sunjay and is the song that provides the album title – “Don’t call me stranger/I’m just like you”. There’s subtle humour in ‘Never Needed It More’; melancholy in ‘What It Might Have Been’ and self-deprecation in ‘Help Me Now’. ‘Train Home’ is cleverly placed as the first of two closing tracks followed by the invitation to ‘Leave The Light On’ as the singer will be home soon.

I’m Just Like You is cracker of an album and if you haven’t encountered Chris Smither before this is an excellent place to start before digging into record shop archaeology. It’s also Sunjay’s most sophisticated album and I imagine that I can hear the sound of emancipation within it.

Tracks:
01 - Link of Chain
02 - No Love Today
03 - Love You Like a Man
04 - Mail Order Mystics
05 - Father's Day
06 - Up on the Lowdown
07 - Rosalie
08 - Small Revelations
09 - Open Up
10 - Don't Call Me Stranger
11 - Never Needed It More
12 - What It Might Have Been
13 - Help Me Now
14 - Train Home
15 - Leave the Light On

Staat er compleet op, 10% pars mee gepost. Met zeer veel dank aan de originele poster. Laat af en toe eens weten wat je van het album vindt. Altijd leuk, de mening van anderen. Oh ja, MP3 doe ik niet aan.