Cyril Neville
Album: Magic Honey
Label: Ruf
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.cyrilneville.net

Never mind that Cyril Neville was the cornerstone of The Meters, the wildest, funkiest, downright swampiest, gumbo-groovin' combo to ever suck on a crab claw; never mind that his guest list on this record numbers Dr John, Allen Toussaint and Walter Trout; the listener only need hear the first two bars of the title track that opens the album to know they're in the presence of something special.

Of course there's always a danger that a man with that much pedigree, joined by others with that much pedigree can produce something a little too highly bred, a little too rich for anyone other than themselves to be alive to, but fear not. These fellas are people pleasers through and through, so when they get round to pressing record they're going to make sure they got something worth leaving behind.

None of them are exactly spring chickens, but this music is as alive and anything any of them have done in recent years. And that's saying something as Cyril's outings with the Royal Southern Brotherhood have never been anything less that exemplary, Dr John's last album, Locked Down, was his best for years, Toussaint released a beautiful set of jazz standards wit Joe Henry at the helm just a couple of years ago and Trout is as reliable as ever on the live stage.

Magic Honey is laced with the blues and so much more besides. And it's that so-much-more that makes the record so darned infectious. This stuff gets under your skin quicker than a mosquito tweeter, whether it's a stone soul cover of Rush's Working Man(Incorrectly credited as the Bloomfield song on the album), the dense N'Awlins grove of Swamp Funk (with Toussaint and John trading keys) or the gutsy Running Water. Neville's voice is high enough to play footsie with the stars, yet he still manages to rub grit into the wavering vibrato he brings to the gutsy stuff that conveys the emotion in overdrive.

Greater than the sum of its parts? Well, these are some parts arraigned here, so it's far from feint praise to say Magic Honey is equal to the sum of its parts.

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk