Since this CD dropped through my letterbox about three months back been dying to review it and hoping that Charlie doesn't die before this album comes out.
As mentioned in my review for the single 'The Spinning of the Wheel', Charlie was diagnosed with incurable cancer last December as they were putting the finishing touches to this album.
Of course, once you know that it adds meaning to everything on the album, but this would be a contender for Blues album of the year regardless of the health of anyone involved. Charlie has been known as a great Keyboard player for a long time from his roots in Last Chance Cafe to being part of the bands backing Linda Gail Lewis, Osibisa and Otis Grand among others.
Opening with Greed, a great swaggering blues tune about love in a burning building as the central character finds that his greed burns everything around him, the song gets its' hooks into you and doesn't let go: a metaphor for the whole album really as soon Charlie is Drinking his Blues Away in the style of Tom Waits meets the Urban Voodoo Machine and it has a great big helping of Despair about how life is treating him.
Life is treating Charlie pretty roughly judging by the tale written on the walls of Brixton Road where the protagonist gets robbed blind as this great band sound more and more like they had recorded at Muscle Shoals or somewhere similar. Anywhere but the gutter he wakes up in during Out There, about waking up deep in the gutter with a thirst that just won't go away. The music, meanwhile, is urgently seeking a door to open so he can fall back into the bar and gnaw away at that itch.
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Then comes the single The Spinning Of The Wheel. It feels like the central part of the album as its own tale of this boy who has crawled from the gutter and fallen for a hellion of a woman who he is trying to make it with. It's a song that everyone should listen to. Charlie then covers In my Time of Dying. It has an additional gravitas in his situation, but while it's a good version, it's not as chilling as Lydia Lunch's version but still far better than Led Zeppelins and it has some great chain rattling going on.
Song In A Minor Key is a good Leonard Cohen-style dark tale with some heavy strings to bring out the emotions and ram home the story. On Rio Grande, he asks "will you make it across alive?" It could almost be a metaphor for crossing the Coldharbour Lane front line dodging the dealers. I could hear someone like Bob Frank doing a really chilly version of this.
The Real Real Gone is one of those songs about a truely gone junkie who needs to find a way back or he'll be under the ground before the song ends. As with all the songs on this excellent album, it sounds like it comes from either personal experience or the experiences of those around Charlie. It all adds up to one of the must have albums of the year so far for me.
Charlie Lankester online
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