Babajack
Album: Running Man
Label: Running Rooster
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.babajack.com

"Running Man" is the latest from West Country blues band, Babajack. An album that is resplendently raw from the instrumentation upwards, winebox guitars, cajon and other hand percussion right to the fore.

When I say raw, please don't that to imply in any way incomplete or out of tune, I mean raw as in stripped down like a skateboarder collecting an arm and leg full of road rash, jeans and t-shirt shredded.

This is an album of perfectly executed poverty blues, with a slight West Country accent. It's also an album of human spirit, one that grabs life and makes of it what it can. There has always been an underclass, one that may have been hard drinking, migratory and in all honesty short lived, but it was lived and lived with many of the same emotions as the landed gentry.

Many of the early blues instruments were home made, but there were and are some beautifully crafted instruments made out of wine and cigar boxes, with sounds everything as beautiful as their conventionally built counterparts. The same is equally as true of the music.

Becky Tate is an incredibly expressive musician and singer, something that comes across in her studio performance as much as it does live, but then again it is essentially the same thing, Babajack tend to adopt that set up the microphones, plug in and go for it approach. And quite simply the results are stunning.

Blues musicians of old had a bars and churches reputation with one side representing the more physical side of life, the other spiritual with the emotions running right down the middle. There are times when "Running Man" does feel like a revivalist meeting with a real firebrand hell and damnation delivering great oratory.

Freedom an opportunity are regular focuses in blues, that feeling that hard work if not enough to make you actually rich should be enough to make you comfortable or at the very least be able to afford the basics, I couldn't help but feel how many of those early bluesman would be able to relate to in today's blues songs.

The other thing that it's impossible to ignore in Babajack is the subtlety of Trevor Stegor's impressive guitar work, not that you'd want to or indeed be capable, sometimes dropping right back into the sound, at other times right at the forefront taking the lead and directing the song, wherever it's placed.

"Falling Hard" is in many ways the distilled spirit of "Running Man", emphasising that ultimately there may not be time to deal with the trivial, when there are some real issues that need to be addressed both personally and in the world that influences the songs.

"Running Man" captures the real essence of folk blues, gives it a little local twist and reminds everyone what the blues is about, particularly when being delivered by artists that have that fire and brimstone attitude flowing through their songs from the ground up.

Neil King