Rock, blues and acoustic - original, intelligent, grown-up and groovy.

11 MP3 Songs in this album (49:28) !
Related styles: ROCK: Classic Rock, BLUES: Guitar Blues

People who are interested in Fleetwood Mac Eric Clapton should consider this download.


Details:
A guitar band the way a guitar band should be and songs the way songs should be. This is a foot-stomping, heart-warming, soul-searing, three course meal of a band - with wine and coffee.

Growing in stature with every gig, Sloe Jam have torn up the genre labels; they just pick up their guitars and play their songs the way they go.

REVIEWS:

Bittersweet - and it gets under your skin.

It is arguably harder to review this album than most other things if for one reason only; it just so happens that Sloe Jam is a band from these parts - Somerset, UK and that defines it about as poorly as could be imagined - the cross-genre magnificence of the Glastonbury Festival defines music better than the Wurzels could ever hope to. It would be easy if I could say they were 'Scrumpy & Western' or just another pub-band but fortunately they are not.

For a start Next To The Skin consists only of original compositions and, while I have no issue with judicious covers, that is worthy of note and at eleven tracks (49 minutes) is it not short but certainly never overstays it welcome. The band is tight and the production as clean as it needs to be but still quite unforced.

When global warming means that the Somerset Levels again resemble a delta at least there is the soundtrack to go with it and a far bigger stage than this (Frome) surely beckons....

Stand-out tracks? That's hard to say, but possibly 'Believe In Magic', 'A Wanderer, She Said' and 'Open More Wine'.

Or try it this way instead and it is a very rash suggestion indeed: play an Eric Clapton album, each track interleaved with one from 'Next To The Skin', and just listen... They are in no way the same but try and imagine what it might have sounded like if Clapton had a female co-vocalist and Pee Wee Ellis guesting on saxophone. I did exactly that - using 'Unplugged' as the Clapton album - and now I really understand why they don't do covers.

If you want to spoil yourself and also baffle your blues-rock loving friends then this album is mandatory.

Richard Greenhalgh - rpgreenhalgh.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html

THANKS:

Thanks to JONNY KINKEAD for many years of inspiration from a gorgeous guitar. (Go to www.kinkadeguitars.co.uk and drool.)

Thanks to SIMON WILLIAMS for his great solo on the demo of Open More Wine.

Thanks to the great PEE WEE ELLIS and the tall WILL ANGELORO without whom the album would have been a pale imitation.

CONTACT:

For regular updates about gigs, etc. drop us a line at sloejam[at]sloejam.info