Ged Wilson
Album: What's Going On
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 8
Website: http://www.gedwilson.com

By current standards, "What's Going On?" is a short album, the eight tracks coming in at just over the half hour. Now I don't have a problem with that, I'd rather an artist delivered a short album where every song counts, rather than one padded out with filler tracks that don't cut the mustard.

Wilson, plays acoustic blues that, in a lot of places, border on the edge of jazz, syncopated, lots of finger clicking, blues shouter vocals with soulful support vocals. The sound definitely tends towards the mellow, with a nightclub swing running through, a chilled out vibe and one that is seemingly at odds with the highly politicised lyrics, but surprisingly it works most of the time.

When listening to the lyrics, particularly on songs like "Different Class" and "Lies", both attacks on the establishment and the state of democracy in this country, no life experience politicians following the public school, Oxbridge, not knowing the price of a pint of milk route, I initially found myself wanting Wilson to crank it up and let it go, to be more aggressive, but as the album progressed, I realised that that's not his style, there is a more questioning element to the way he puts it across.

There is an element of "What's Going On" that I don't think one of the blues young guns is could deliver because there is a lot of reflection in the album, looking back to how it was, not necessarily better or worse, but different. Ged Wilson isn't so much a grumpy old man as one that's not content with what we've let our country become. There's a line in "Reign Cheque", 'a head full of ideas and nothing to say' something that reflects more than thinking about making life better, but actually doing something about it. The need to inspire action.

Neil King