Elles Bailey - Shining In The Half Light 
Release Date: 25th February 2022
Bristol's Elles Bailey is kind of a big deal in the Blues world but with an album like this, it might just be time for her to cross over in to the mainstream. 'Shining in The Half Light' was written during the isolation of the global pandemic and gets off to a great start on 'Cheats & Liars' which stomps and lurches like something between the Indigo Girls at their darkest and Larkin Poe in full flow. 'The Game' is a little lighter and the roadhouse blues vibe comes out with the snarling guitar and Bailey's Bristol-via-Louisiana vocals. The opening trio of tunes is completed by 'Stones', a song covered in slathered organ like a smoking brisket bubbling in sweet, sticky barbecue sauce. It's delicious.
The tempo is dropped down on 'Colours Start To Run', a country tinged ballad that shows off the power and emotion of Bailey's voice brilliantly as you can almost hear the crackle of the neon sign in the back-of-beyond bar over the backing band. Similarly, 'Different Kind of Love' has a mellow tone with some gorgeous guitar playing accompanying those sultry vocal tones. This dusky triumverate of tunes ends with 'Whot's That' which lurches and lurks in the shadows with a brooding, soul-tortured energy full of paranoia and suspicion.
The party kicks in again on 'Sunshine City', a real top-down road trip of a song that channels ZZ Top in the guitars before 'Halfway House' does a superb job of tugging at the heart strongs with an acoustic meander through the debris of a broken relationship. There's something of a Stevie Wonder vibe to 'Riding Out The Storm' with soft organ notes and guitar twangs soundtracking a journey back to love. The album closes out with title track 'Shining In The Half Time', an introspective and yearning song that sounds like it would sit nicely on a Wille & the Bandits album with its mix of styles and vocal rawness. This is a brilliant and enthralling album full of great songs, excellent musicianship and raw emotion and there's not much more you can ask for than that in an album, is there?
More information: https://www.facebook.com/ellesbailey/
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