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Review: 'Stafford, Harry With The Guitar Shaped Hammers'
'Gothic Urban Blues'   

-  Label: 'Black Lagoon Records/Bandcamp'
-  Genre: 'Blues' -  Release Date: '27.3.20.'

Our Rating:
This is the second album that Harry Stafford has put out with Guitar Shaped Hammers I am more used to Reviewing Harry singing and fronting The legendary Inca Babies one of the finest Death Rock bands to ever come out of Manchester so I was very happy to get this to review.

The album opens with She Blew Me Away a nice gentle strolling blues with some wonderful muted trumpet from Kevin Davy with Rob Hayne's sparse percussion and Harry singing in a far more gentle way than he does in Inca Babies it also has a delicious guitar solo from Vincent O'Brien and Nick Brown that lasts about 15 seconds and probably helps to make sure we all felt like we've been blown away.

Cruel Set Of Shades is a dark tale of fighting the good fight while wearing a Cruel Set Of Shades in the everglades it's stripped back and sparsely beautiful and also rather evocative.

Painted Ocean has some cool bar room piano to help back Harry as he almost croons the repeated cries of there's only you and it feels like he's watching you slowly walk across the room towards him so he can paint you as if your walking down a beach with the ocean behind you and no the lyrics don't reflect that.

Infinite Dust opens as a slow building anthem but it's much more a eulogy for the lives slipping away almost like they are accompanying the last post to a love that's gone a truly beautiful swansong for someone whose no longer here.

Black Rain is a gothic blues piano similar to James Johnston's In A Starless Room that seems almost perfect for the times we are living in full of dark foreboding imagery and that Black Rain is going to keep falling almost a perfect blues song to come out in March 2020.

Sideways Shuffle reworks several old blues tunes all at once and ends up being like Barry Adamson's 007 and has that same sort of stark majesty.

View In A Bar is the tale of the barflies to sink a few more drinks too while wondering why they never leave the bar, is there anything else he ever wanted to do but sit at that bar.

I hope in our current situation we all get to go and sit at our favorite bar listening to this tune soon.

Disappearing a perfect song title for life as it is Disappearing now as this tale of someone who wants to disappear for good and is a slowly unfurling drama gently embryonic blues for her impending dash across the cliffs in her time of despair well eulogies to the lost are making me think of all the friends we are losing this year.

Into The Storm is another dark slow and beautiful blues for our times that sound like it comes from another less troubled time and yet coming out amidst the Pandemic it feels like the Storm is raging around us all and we need to try to keep listening to stop the unfolding storm from enveloping us all. I have found this a rather emotional album to listen too.

Whether it was written and recorded earlier Harry Stafford and his top-notch Guitar Shaped Hammers have the Gothic Urban Blues about perfect and the title track appears also as a Single.

https://harrystafford.bandcamp.com/album/gothic-urban-blues https://www.facebook.com/harrystaffordUK/
  author: simonovitch

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