Published on Feb 3, 2006
DaBluz Crew is a five-piece outfit hailing from
Northern California. This quintet plays pretty standard blues with
a healthy dose of R&B. It’s hard to fault their enthusiasm, but
the music is pretty generic middle-of-road stuff. I guess I like my
blues with a lot more grit and fire to it.
Singer Susan Dunlop has a clear, strong voice but her
delivery does not stand out as exceptional to me. The musicians are
good, they have talent, but the arrangements are, well, ordinary. I
suppose one of the reasons this disc didn’t grab me is that it
reminds me of the general homogenization of the blues into
“contemporary blues” that has happened over the past decade. In the
60s and 70s, many artists were influenced by the blues and
maintained the essence of the roots of a truly American musical
style, adopting its simple framework as a foundation for
improvisation and experimentation.
One of the hallmarks of powerful blues is the
instrumental prowess of the musicians, typically the role of the
guitar player. In the case of DaBluz, their songs use the classic
three-chord blues progressions but they don’t really build anything
around it. There is a distinct lack of powerful solos or
improvisation.
DaBluz sounds their best when the slow it down a bit.
The down-tempo “Twilight Bluz” is an excellent smoky instrumental
featuring some beautiful sax by Paul Towne. “Missing My Baby” is a
sultry torch song and Susan delivers the melancholy vocal nicely.
Guitarist Frank Carvalho takes over vocals on “Roadhouse,” and adds
a nice Texas shuffle to the song, but the lyrics offer nothing at
all to make this track work, a situation that is common throughout
the 10 songs. The lack of outstanding lyrics is another reason this
CD didn’t appeal much to me. For blues, the songs are mostly too
upbeat, and frankly don’t have much depth to them.
The end result is a little too light and breezy for
me to embrace among the type of blues that I personally prefer. The
recording is well done, nice and clean, and each member is
perfectly mixed. I just want a little more power and grit in a
blues recording for it to bear repeated listening.