Published on Mar 14, 2000
To call Coco Montoya a blues musician is not a totally accurate
description.
Oh, sure, he earned his stripes at the feet of the late blues
master Albert Collins. But on Montoya’s new album
Suspicion, he proves that he’s really an r&b artist at
heart – and, for the most part, this approach to the music on a
label known best for its blues work is a shot in the arm.
Montoya’s vocals are as smooth as a cold beer on a hot night,
and his guitar playing is incredibly fluid, making the six-string
sing as if it was a featured vocalist. Whatever Montoya learned
from Collins, he obviously was paying close attention.
But if you put this disc in the player expecting nothing but
killer 12-bar exercises, grab something sturdy and hold on tight.
Montoya puts himself and his backing band through a powerful
musical workout, encompassing not only the blues, but r&b/soul
(“I Need Your Love In My Life,” “Fool”), on-the-border pop
(“Nothing But Love”) and even some Southern-fried boogie a la Dr.
John (“Casting My Spell”).
What’s interesting is not just that Montoya handles the changes
with ease or that the stylistic switching sounds completely
natural. What’s interesting is that these deviations from pure
blues are what make
Suspicion a special release. For some reason, when Montoya
gets down to some serious 12-bar work, the magic seems to dissipate
as well. Tracks like “Get Your Business Straight” and “Trading One
Fool For Another” just don’t have the same excitement and energy as
other tracks do.
Admittedly, Montoya saves face on other tracks like “Beyond The
Blues” and “What I Know Now,” but one has to wonder why things go
south, even for the briefest of times, when Montoya switches to the
blues. Maybe it’s because he’s now focusing on what is expected of
him, not on the way he crosses musical boundaries as if he was
leaping over a piece of paper on the floor.
Suspicion is an exciting disc from an artist whom I think
we’ll be hearing a lot more from in the next few years. Even with
the occasional lag in excitement, this disc is a powerful sign of
things to come.