WIDELY
acclaimed as the best album Rory Gallagher has made in years, "Fresh
Evidence" offers exactly what its title suggests. While the great man's
fans would have been quite content to spend their pennies on yet
another collection of typical Rory rockers with the odd acoustic song
thrown in.... Gallagher himself has different ideas, is coming in now
from another angle.
Simply, he is making a return trip to those places which originally
fired his imagination, is re-exploring old fields of influence with the
authority of someone who has all of the experience to be confident in
his craft. If his early Seventies forays into areas such as jazz were
tentative, perhaps a little self-conscious, they are now, with the
instrumental "Alexis", complete, convincing and authentic.
Elsewhere, Rory is back among the sugar cane, back in the lonesome
town, back in the barrel-house and down at the station, revelling in
the old rustic blues of Eddie "Son" House's "Empire State Express", the
gentle roll of "Heaven's Gate", the pacey shuffle of "Ghost Blues", the
wailing harmonicas of the moody "Middle Name."
Yet, for all of its looking back, this LP bristles with a contemporary
sense of adventure and wit, not least on the sprightly interplay
between the accordion and the guitar on "The King Of Zydeco" and the
bare-faced cheek of "The Loop", an instrumental so ridiculously catchy
that someone somewhere will shortly be demanding its use for a TV theme
tune.
The whole fascinating variety of sounds and styles forms the body of
the album, although it begins and ends with the familiar hullaballoo of
trademark Gallagher rock. The romping, piano-laced "Kid Gloves",
the slow shit-kicking "Walkin' Wounded" and the climactic "Slumming
Angel" make all the more impact for the contrasting material they
surround."
Perhaps the most important achievement of "Fresh Evidence" is in
re-establishing Rory as something more than an electric guitar
virtuoso. Here is the proof that the man is a master, someone with a
supreme feel for the instrument and the song, whatever its mood CAROL CLERK
RORY GALLAGHER
Fresh Evidence CAPO LP 14
Fender-bending Irish person and ultimate rock'n'roll journeyman,
Rory Gallagher remains, in his own low-profile way, among the more
enduring landmarks on pop's turbulent landscape. Twenty years after
Taste- that definitive guitar, bass and drums "power trio", he's turned
out yet another of those sturdily dependable collections of high grade
boogie music that have sustained his career down the years. Fresh Evidence, indeed, clings with
dogged resolution to his familiar chugging formula: gritty 12-bar
blues, taut and rolling, lean and purposeful. As usual, too, there's a
burst of old-style acoustic blues dexterity (in this case Eddie "Son"
House's Empire State Express) to punctuate the general run of
Stratocaster virtuosity, and terse accounts of "hanging round this
lonesome town" (Middle Name) and hard-lovin' women (Slumming Angel)
who've heaped their share on top of the troubles that beset a poor boy
just trying to get along in this life. If there's a certain lack of
personality, or of truly vivid variation, in Gallagher's approach to
hard rock, then at least his dry, steely grasp of band dynamics has
never deserted him -there isn't a slack or soggy moment on the whole
album. Paul Du Noyer The first review
comes from a 1990 issue of Melody
Maker The second
comes from a 1990 issue of Q
magazine I don't have the source of the tour
advertisement reformatted by roryfan
