English blues-rock guitarist and singer/songwriter Joanne Shaw Taylor reached another level of acceptance with the covers set The Blues Album for Joe Bonamassa's KTBA label in 2020, and followed with the scorching Blues from the Heart Live in 2021. She returned to KTBA and the canny production team of Bonamassa and guitarist Josh Smith on Nobody's Fool, a studio set that finds her back in the songwriter's chair. She wrote or co-wrote 10 of these 11 songs and recorded them at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles. The music ranges ...
Read More
English blues-rock guitarist and singer/songwriter Joanne Shaw Taylor reached another level of acceptance with the covers set The Blues Album for Joe Bonamassa's KTBA label in 2020, and followed with the scorching Blues from the Heart Live in 2021. She returned to KTBA and the canny production team of Bonamassa and guitarist Josh Smith on Nobody's Fool, a studio set that finds her back in the songwriter's chair. She wrote or co-wrote 10 of these 11 songs and recorded them at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles. The music ranges across modern blues, hooky rock, soul, and old-school R&B. The title-cut opener offers a slide lick reminiscent of George Harrison's on "My Sweet Lord," but a piano progression suggesting Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London" establishes a bar-rocking groove and sweet soul hook above a soaring guitar break, with poignant lyrics about claiming responsibility for one's fate. "Bad Blood" melds acoustic and surf guitars in a nocturnal minor-key groove framed by chimes, Rhodes piano, Hammond B-3, and a rock beat. "Won't Be Fooled Again" is as close to an uplifting and empowering AOR single as Taylor gets as she sings about refusing to wear blinders in relationships. Bonamassa plays rhythm guitar as Taylor and her backing singers (Gaby Moreno, Danielle De Andrea, and Jeff Young) reflect poignantly on lessons learned after a romance, balancing pain and resolve. Swinging horns and a funky clavinet introduce "Just No Getting Over You (Dream Cruise)." Taylor lives in Detroit, and the Motor City's gritty soul influence saturates the track. (One also wonders if the title's parenthetical phrase is a reference to Motown's annual Motor City Dream Cruise). The interplay between singers, bumping horns, the filthy keyboard, and her searing guitar break is worth the price of the album. "Then There's You" is a B-3-drenched blues-rocker written in prime boogie parlance. Taylor's voice slithers, growls, and rasps the lyric with swaggering conviction. "Runaway" is another pop/rocker with slippery interlocking guitar grooves, an infectious melody, and an almost uncomfortably vulnerable, intimate vocal. A cover of Eurythmics' "Missionary Man" features Dave Stewart as a guest. Its rockist strut makes room for driving R&B punctuated by killer slide guitar solos. "Figure It Out" is a fist-pumping, hooky rocker with glammed-up, overdriven guitars. The backing singers add heft and dimension to Taylor's smoky vocal in an exceptionally strong chorus. Drummer Lemar Carter offers creative fills and canny accents atop a slamming backbeat. Guest guitarist Carmen Vandenberg also adds distortion and dissonance to Taylor's runs, adding tasty cacophony. Closer "New Love" was co-written with Beth Nielsen Chapman, Leslie Satcher, and Bonamossa. It's an uptempo, neo-Northern Soul tune buoyed by an army of horns, clattering snare and hi-hat, girl group vocals, and mean guitar breaks. It's a rave-up ending to what is arguably Taylor's finest outing. The tight songwriting here reaches beyond anything she's done before, while the playing, singing, and production are immensely inspired and should enlarge her fan base. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi
Read Less
