Chris Bevington Organisation - Sand & Stone

Sand & Stone, the fourth album by the Chris Bevington Organisation (including the first pair under the monicker of Chris Bevington & Friends), picks up where its excellent 2018 predecessor Cut And Run left off.  Opening track ‘It’s True’ is ushered in by a horn riff and stinging guitar chords, over a thumping beat.  It’s catchy, Scott Ralph’s singing is complemented by silky backing vocals from Kate Robertson and Sarah Miller, and it’s rounded out by a squawking sax solo from guest Chris Aldridge, and some ripping lead guitar courtesy of Jim Kirkpatrick.

Cool bassist Chris Bevington declines to go for the legs akimbo pose

But the seamless handover of the baton from the signature exuberance of Cut And Run doesn’t tell the whole story.  Sand & Stone is a more varied affair, at times cooler in tone.  And that’s – well, cool.  It’s cool because it shows that CBO are still progressing from the collective who Chris Bevington recruited to record some favourite blues covers on their first album.  It’s cool because the songwriting duo of Ralph and Kirkpatrick are exploring different avenues rather than ploughing the same furrow.

So on this outing we get the soulful slowie ‘Already Got The Blues’, Ralph’s vocal winding around Neil McCallum’s terrific drum sound and guitar from Kirkpatrick that shifts from restrained to squealing as it competes with more emotive sax breaks.  The following ‘Blues Is Everywhere I Go’ is swinging soul on which the lead vocals are taken by Miller and Robertson, with a melody that offers some interesting twists and turns, an organ solo from Dave Edwards that kicks off by quoting Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’, and a selection of horn breaks.  And ‘It Was Over’ is an epic-style moody slow number built on a rippling guitar motif and distant swirls of organ, anchored by Bevington’s bass.

Meanwhile acoustic guitar, and harp from Ralph, kick off the tipsy old-fashioned blues of ‘What Did I Drink Last Night’ against a backdrop of bar-room chatter, with Kirkpatrick adding a suitably woozy slide solo to go with chasers of sax.  The closing 'Sand And Stone' takes another different tack, exploring a work song vibe but applies it to the coal mines of Britain rather than the cotton fields of the South.  Moaning harp and anthemic vocal harmonies lead the way into the song, joined by simple chiming guitar and a drumbeat like a pickaxe, before Kirkpatrick applies the coup de grace with subtle slide guitar.

But if these tunes broaden the Organisation’s range, the spine of the 11-track album is still swinging, rocking blues, whether it’s the strutting funkiness of ‘Bad Bad Bad’, with stuttering horns from Ben Oakes on sax and Lewis Topping on trombone, ‘Deep River’ shifting from gutsy riff to a reliance on simple vocals and drums, or the funky R’n’B of the all-too-brief ‘I Got Time’.  This last, with its rolling horns, swinging rhythm section, squealing guitar break, and echoes of Etta James’ ‘Blues Is My Business’ as resurrected by Little Steven & The Disciples Of Soul, is a track they could, and really should, have taken further.  And ‘Heaven Above’ is grindingly funky, with more harp to the fore from Ralph over a mid-paced swagger driven by McCallum’s tub-thumping drums, and Kirkpatrick contributing a wailing solo.

I don’t imagine Chris Bevington regards himself in any way as the leader of the Organisation that bears his name.  But he deserves credit for being the catalyst for a band that brings a distinctively big sound to the British blues table, and is now mining a rich seam of original songs from Jim Kirkpatrick and Scott Ralph, who have combined to become an impressive writing and production team.  Sand & Stone succeeds once again in taking a swinging blues style and giving it a modern freshness.  Which is, y'know, kinda cool.

Sand & Stone is available on all the usual digital platforms and on the band’s own website, where it can be purchased in digital, CD and vinyl formats: www.chrisbevingtonorganisation.com.

The Blues Enthused Christmas Stocking 2018 - Part 2

So was Santa good to you all then?  Finished all the turkey and ready for a bit more reflection on 2018 with Blues Enthused?

One of the highlights of the second half of the year was a first visit to the Carlisle Blues Rock Festival back in September, for two out of its three days.   A brilliantly organised affair, it was blessed with a cracking bill, the Saturday night topped off by a set from Thorbjorn Risager & The Black Tornado that was a hit from the minute their guitars starting cranking out the riff to ‘If You Wanna Leave’.

Thorbjorn Risager rocks the flat cap look

Carlisle also offered a first chance for me to see the Chris Bevington Organisation, who offered up one of the most straight ahead, good-time albums of the year, with the rocked up blues outing Cut And Run.  A 9-piece outfit featuring horns, keys, backing singers, and the kitchen sink, they pulled together great songs, quality musicianship and a great sound, in an album that crackled with enthusiasm from start to finish on tracks like 'It Ain't Easy'. 

Worth noting for their willingness to do something a bit different in the album stakes were Big Boy Bloater, with Pills, and Jawbone, with their self-titled debut album.  The Bloat fella’s album may not be solid gold – there are a couple of misfires, for my money – but with his rough-edged rock’n’roll, rougher-edged voice, funny lyrics and penchant for B-Movie tales, as well a neat line in Nick Lowe-ish country fare, he’s still a breath of fresh air - see what you make of 'Friday Night's Alright For Drinking'.  And Jawbone are similarly refreshing, as they take a late Sixties Big Pink vibe and transplant it to 21^stCentury Britain, with a heap of strong songs, contrasting lead vocals from Marcus Bonfanti and Paddy Milner, and a readiness to let Milner’s piano set the tone as much as Bonfanti’s guitar.  They also have a nice way with a lyric, as '2 Billion Heartbeats' demonstrates.

Right now there are a host of great female roots music artists out there in both Britain and America, and one of the standout albums of the year came at the hands of one of them – Kansas City’s Danielle Nicole, who released her second solo album Cry No More back in March - and picked up a Grammy Award nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album at the tail end of the year.  No sign of her coming to Europe for live dates in the near future though – unlike Shemekia Copeland, Ana Popovic and Samantha Fish, who are all going to be within hailing distance for me in the same week in May!  Never mind, here's Ms Nicole casting a 'Hot Spell'.

A new find for me on the female singer front this year was Tierinii Jackson, of Memphis-based soul-blues outfit Southern Avenue, who delivered a crackling performance at the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival in the summer.  If Vintage Trouble are your kind of band, then you may well enjoy Southern Avenue, although they also stir a spoonful of gospel into the mix.  Here they are getting funky on ‘Rock Steady’, with Tierinii Jackson in typical Little Miss Dynamite form.

Danielle Nicole has a quiet evening in

On the book front, this year I’ve been working my way through Stuart Cosgrove’s ‘Soul Trilogy’, comprising Detroit 67, Memphis 68, and Harlem 69.  The books cover a lot of ground, such as the development of Motown and Stax, and key events in black culture like the Detroit riots, the assassination of Martin Luther King, and the emergence of the Black Panthers.  But much of the pleasure is to be found in the characters Cosgrove turns up, many of whom are unfamiliar.

In the latest book it’s interesting to come across someone like Betty Mabry, who was married to Miles Davis for a time, was a friend of Jimi Hendrix, and by the sound of it was an all-round cross-cultural phenomenon.  A catwalk model, club owner, songwriter and singer, Cosgrove paints her as a forceful, networking catalyst in the emergence of jazz-rock and fusion.

Or there’s King Curtis, a workaholic sax player, band leader, arranger, musical director and talent scout, who I must confess I’d never heard of before, but whose mid-Sixties band The Kingpins at one time or another included famed drummer Bernard Purdie, and the still developing Hendrix.  Here they are cooking up a 'Memphis Soul Stew'.  It says something about Curtis’s status that for a while the Kingpins were apparently Aretha Franklin’s preferred backing band.

And with the death of Aretha earlier this year, that seems like a good point at which to close the lid on 2018.  So here is the Queen of Soul, doubtless an inspiration for some of those singers listed above, showing how it’s done on ‘I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You’.

You can find Part 1 of the Blues Enthused Christmas Stocking here.

The Friday Session - Carlisle Blues Rock Festival, 28 September 2018

It’s Friday, it’s 5 to 7, and it’s standing room only in the ballroom of the Crown & Mitre Hotel as we arrive for our first visit to the Carlisle Blues Rock Festival.  But it turns out to be well worth standing for the duration to see the four acts on offer.

First up are local favourites Redfish, and they turn in a much stronger performance than when I last saw them, in a support slot in Edinburgh. They deliver a solid set of old school R’n’B, with warm vocals and relaxed patter from bunnet-wearing front man Stumblin’ Harris.

Redfish - Bunnets Are Us

There are funky undercurrents on the likes of Bill Withers’ ‘Use Me Up’, with nimble bass from Rod Mackay and some neat drumming diversions as a bonus.

Their own material fits in well alongside a punchy version of ‘Messin’ With The Kid’ and Magic Sam’s ‘Every Night And Every Day’, with measured solos from guitarist Martin McDonald and boogieing piano from all action keys man Fraser Clark.  It all adds up to an entertaining set that has me acquiring their new EP at the interval.

The Chris Bevington Organisation have produced one of the albums of the year so far with Cut And Run, so I was looking forward to seeing them live, and they didn’t disappoint. With a nine-piece line-up it’s no wonder that other commitments mean there are stand-ins depping for two of three of the usual band, and sadly this includes guitarist and core contributor Jim Kirkpatrick.  I suspect the loss of his interaction with co-conspirator and vocalist/guitarist Scott Ralph dilutes the dynamic of this ensemble affair a bit, but Jordan

The Chris Bevington Organisation get cookin'

Swann does a good job of filling in.  He contributes a sizzling lead guitar intro on ‘Coming Down With The Blues’, eloquent playing on ‘Tin Pan Alley’, and a squealing solo on the excellent ‘Got To Know’. The last of these also features pumping bass from Chris Bevington, gutsy rhythm playing from Ralph, and strong punctuation all round.

‘Better Start Cookin’’ features a trumpet solo and call and response organ and guitar, underlining the variety they can bring to bear.  Ralph fronts operations with brio, and by the time they get to ‘Ain’t Got Nobody To Love’ his Cheshire Cat grin sums up the enjoyment both on and off the stage. They close their 50 minute set with the totally danceable ‘Rollin’’, closing a live show that emulates the vibrancy of their latest album.

Elles Bailey unshackled 

Elles Bailey is a more soulful proposition, but gets the ball rolling with a couple of familiar barn-burners in the form of ‘Let Me Hear You Scream’ and ‘Same Flame’ from her album Wildfire, before offering us something new in the form of the soulful ‘What’s The Matter’.  A cover of Levon Helm’s ‘When I Go Away’ suits her nicely, with some very Stax-like keys from stand-in ivory tinkler James Graham, and some good vocal interplay to boot. Depping drummer Craig Connett also shows up well, with good cymbal work to rev up the intensity on the Muscle Shoals tribute ‘Perfect Storm’, with its strong melody, while another newie in the form of ‘Medicine Man’ is offbeat, driving and dynamic, with appealing slide from Joe Wilkins.  

‘Shackles Of Love’ continues to be my favourite among her material though – a song with a great hook that wouldn’t be out of place on a Bonnie Raitt album.

She tells us that another new song, the thumping, train-like ‘The Road I Call Home’ will be the title track to her new album in the spring, before returning to familiar territory with the emotive ‘Girl Who Owned The Blues’, with its stomping conclusion, and ‘Wildfire’ with its moody slide solo from Wilkins.

Elles Bailey’s amiably daft and self-deprecating chat always makes for an engaging performance.  But more to the point she has a great voice, strong original material, and bags of potential still to be explored.

Guitar totin' Siegal and Cigaar

Topping the bill for the night is Ian Siegal, who has gone way past the point of being described in terms of potential.  Still, I do believe that he’s found another gear this year with the release of his latest album All The Rage.  Coming on wearing a headband, with his festival lanyard flapping around his knees, he eases in with the characteristic, immediately sing-able melody of ‘Shotgun Rider’.  He and the band raise the temperature with the clacking favourite ‘I Am The Train’, with inimitable guitarist Dusty Cigaar being – well, inimitably Dusty.  But they really hit the bullseye with ‘The Shit Hit’, on which a wild slide solo from Siegal is a prelude to a bout of finger wagging, electrifying truth telling.  On an entirely different note, the classic blues of ‘John The Revelator’ interpolates ‘Back Door Man’ in rowdy fashion, and leads to an outbreak of dancing from some of the ladies.  Then it’s back to Siegal at his most withering with ‘Eagle-Vulture’, its spiky guitar line embellished by wafting notes from Cigaar.

A different kind of highlight comes with the North Mississippi Hill Country blues of CeDell Davies’s ‘She’s Got The Devil In Her’.  It’s followed by ‘Gallo Del Cielo’, which apparently a patron begged for tonight, and on which the poor damn chicken inevitably meets a sticky end once again, before Siegal closes out the night with the lovely ‘Sweet Souvenir’.

The clock strikes twelve and it’s time to head for bed.  Will twelve hours be enough to let us rest up for the next day’s fun and games?

You can find a review of the Saturday afternoon session at Carlisle here.
And the Saturday night session is reviewed here.

Labour Of Love - Blues Enthused speaks to Chris Bevington about his dream blues project

That line “If you build it they will come,” from the movie Field Of Dreams, may not quite hit the mark, but it’ll do.

Seven years ago, at the age of 50, semi-professional bassist Chris Bevington had an idea, and now he’s on the phone to tell me the story.  After years of gigging with blues bands across the north-west of England, there was a bundle of favourite blues songs he’d love to record with a big band, just for his own pleasure.  But, as he puts it, “I knew that the bands I was in at the time, or I’d been in, probably wouldn’t get it.”

The Chris Bevington Organisation - this ain't no power trio

Pics courtesy of Netty G

There were some other musicians he knew though, or at least knew of, who would at least understand the idea. People like Jim Kirkpatrick from the band FM, and producer and multi-instrumentalist Scott Ralph, among others.  Would they maybe agree to contribute?  No harm in asking, he thought.

“But to be honest,” he laughs, “I was expecting people to say, ‘Nah, I’m alright thanks!’  Nicely, you know.  Or, ‘I’m a but busy, but if you get stuck . . . .’  But they didn’t – it was bizarre.  All these people said,  ‘Yeah I’ll come and do it with you.  Tell me when you want me, and send me the tracks.’  So I booked us in to do three songs in a local studio, with the idea that it would either work or it wouldn’t, and even if it worked people might not stay with it after, and then after a few months those three songs became eleven!”

At this stage the recordings were still just intended to be for the ears of Bevington and his pals. But then someone persuaded him that the end product was good enough for public consumption.

“So I packaged it up and that was the first album.  Then it went out and I was reallynervous,” he recalls.  And lo and behold, the self-titled Chris Bevington & Friends was well received. “Which was really good - I was really taken aback by all the lovely comments.  Then we started gigging, and it went from there, playing different venues and festivals.  It’s been really quite incredible.  And the band has stuck pretty much together, all the major players.”

A second album from Chris Bevington & Friends followed, and then – from the re-christened Chris Bevington Organisation – one of the most enjoyable blues albums of this year, in the form of Cut And Run.

“The third album is obviously all our own stuff,” says Bevington, “which I was delighted about. The first album was pretty much covers of blues tracks, but the third album’s our own, which is a different game, and I’ve really enjoyed that, we all have.”

As they should, because Cut And Run is a fresh and vibrant slab of rocking blues, delivered by a nine-piece band, that’s guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

Chris Bevington may have his name on the tin, but he’s open about the fact that Scott Ralph and Jim Kirkpatrick have been increasingly at the helm.  All 12 songs on Cut And Run were written by the pair, and Ralph produced it with some additional input from Kirkpatrick.  So

how did they get going down that road, I ask.

“Well to begin with,” he says, “they only knew of one another.  But it was only when we did the first album, and then the second album, that they hit it off.  They never met one another when they did the first album, because they went in the studio at different times.  Then when they did actually meet they got on like a house on fire – and not only did they do the project we’ve got, but they’re helping one another with other projects.  Scott does FM recording, and all manner of stuff, and they became good friends.  And that’s really cemented it, because then they became a driving force for the third album.

Jim Kirkpatrick and Scott Ralph give it some welly

“Both of them came to me,” he goes on, “and they said let’s go for it.  ‘We’ll get to Christmas,’ – this was Christmas 2016 – ‘and then we’ll start writing.’  And then they went in the studio for three months I think, wrote the twelve tracks, and then brought us all in, and said ‘What do you think?’ and What can we do with this?’ and changed things around.  But they basically are a real powerhouse together – they’re good friends, very professional, they work well together because of the styles of the singing, and the guitar playing.  Having them at the helm has been brilliant.”

But even if Ralph and Kirkpatrick are in the pilots’ seats, the Chris Bevington Organisation is still very much an ensemble affair, as the man himself makes clear when I ask him how he’d describe their sound.

“I think we dip into the different styles of blues, but the emphasis is really on the big sound, to bring in all the brass and all the vocals.  So it’s got that big band sound, but what we try to do is keep an element of that raw slide guitar, so some numbers are more raw.  But in saying that we try to put some technique in there with the shuffles or the drum solos.

“So it does flick across the different styles, but the emphasis was really the big sound, and giving every musician the chance to shine – it’s the first album that every musician got the chance to really playon, if you know what I mean, wrote their own parts and all that, whether it was the horns or the backing vocals.  So everybody was given their space, and then Scott would be there to give advice.  But it was real teamwork, proper teamwork, nobody really demanding anything.  So I think that’s why I was pleased with the album, because I think every member of the band picks it up and thinks, ‘I really contributed to that.’”

I ask if it’s been particularly interesting for Bevington to see this whole process up close, and how Ralph and Kirkpatrick have pulled it all together.  I’m guessing that until he started this project, he’d never really had an insight into how real pros would do it.

“You know, that’s such a good question,” he reflects.  “Because it’s dead true.  When I started the project, I had no experience at all in the studio to speak of, apart from putting bass guitar down on a few recordings with other people. And it’s been a real eye opener, and I’ve really enjoyed watching the process – all kinds of things.  A fascinating thing for me is layering the tracks – which come in first, how to bring in the sounds – and where they bring in a lot of percussion to build up the vibe, and all these different types of instruments.  And they work so well together – because sometimes, honestly, I was probably a little bit lost, I was out of my depth listening to what they were talking about. But you could tell they were that in tune with one another, and Jim’s got such an ear for it as well.  But yeah, we spent many hours, I did, just sat there listening and trying to learn a bit.  And you could see the technique - and you know, they’re clever people. Scott’s clever with all the technology as well.”

Beyond all the technique though, Scott Ralph evidently had a creative vision.

“Scott said one of his objectives for the album was that he wanted to get a very live, 70s sound. And he was on a bit of a mission, to get the drum sound he got, and he did all kinds of things with my bass sound – it was through a valve rig and we did all kinds of things – but he had a vision in his mind of what he wanted it to sound like.  And he’d explained it to me the Christmas before, and he stuck by it all the way through.  Him and Jim had this view, that it’d got to be a little bit of a Seventies sound, with the big drum feel and all that sort of stuff.  And that’s a producer really, isn’t it?  He knew what he was aiming for, and all the way through the album he was making sure it was what he wanted.”

And credit where it’s due, Ralph has created a sound that unifies the whole album.  As I observe to Chris, it’s got an old-fashioned, bluesy, earthy feeling, but manages to be bright at the same time.  Skinsman Neil McCallum must be delighted with the thumping drum sound, the horns from Mike Yorke and Adrian Gibson are given plenty of room to shine, and the backing vocals by Sarah Miller and Kate Robertson slot in perfectly to add another dimension to several songs.  If you’re looking for a comparison, something like Paice Ashton Lord’s track ‘Dance With Me Baby’ springs to mind – which also happened to feature Jim Kirkpatrick’s chum Bernie Marsden.

Not your average 'geezer with a guitar' album cover

On a different creative note, Cut And Run also has an attractive and distinctive album cover.  Unlike your typical blues cover photo of a bloke posing with a guitar, it features a photograph of an old building, just as its two Chris Bevington & Friends predecessors did.  So how did that come about?  Bevington laughs.

“Well, on the first album, I went for a bit of a decrepit building look – it was in New York, and a photographer in New York, and I bought the photos off him.  One was a very derelict building.  And that came about from me with no real plan in mind. Number two was when Scott Ralph was producing, with Jim, some guy in Neary, in Ireland, and the second album cover was actually a picture of a house there.  It looked so authentic, and we got a bit of a feel for it, so I said yeah that’s fine, we’ll go for that.  And then for this latest one, Scott’s got a property in Portugal which he’s doing up, and he just so happened to walk past the house that’s on the cover.  And I gave it to a graphic designer, Michelle Lyons, who was super, and I said, ‘What would you do with that?’  And that’s the design she came back with.”

The new album also involved a rebranding of the band as the Chris Bevington Organisation.  So what brought that about, I wonder? Turns out it was Jim Kirkpatrick’s idea.

“Because Jim’s got quite a few contacts in the business,” Bevington explains, “people had said to him, ‘Don’t mind the name, but the “and Friends” sounds like a get together of musicians who are not necessarily a band,’ you know?  So Jim came along and said, why don’t we change the name and make it sound a bit more business-like?  And to be honest, I was saying to them, I felt they were the musicians, so did they want to keep the name the same, or come up with a band name? Because I’m not precious about it in any way.  But they wouldn’t change the name, with me in it.”

Which is a real compliment, I suggest.

“I know.  But I felt a bit awkward at the start, because I didn’t want it to seem like I was the

Chris Bevington - plenty to smile about

Pic courtesy of Netty G

big name, when there’s Jim and Scott and the rest of them.  But they said no, so we changed it to the Organisation, and changed the website and all that, and they just thought it would sound a bit more like we were a band, and not some jazz collaboration.”

The strong impression I have from speaking with Chris Bevington is of a very humble guy when it comes to his musical contribution.  But he does admit that in other respects it’s been a labour of love on his part.

“Over the time, I suppose I’ve put a lot of my heart and soul into it,” he says, “and money as well, and I’ve always tried to make it as good as I could, in a nice way.  So when we’ve gone in the studio, we’ve spent the right amount of time.  We haven’t skimped it.  And everybody’s been like that.  So we’re all out to do the very best we can do.  Scott’s recorded it and produced it with Jim, and everybody’s got involved, but I was desperately trying to make it something that we would be proud of.”

He may not be the front man of the Chris Bevington Organisation in a traditional sense, but in my book Bevington has every reason to be proud of bring into existence the band that bears his monicker.  He built it, they came, and the results are mightily impressive.  I’m counting the days till I see them live.

You can find an interview with Scott Ralph by a fellow blogger here.

The Chris Bevington Organisation are appearing at the Carlisle Blues Rock Festival on Friday 28 September.

Chris Bevington Organisation - Cut And Run

Feeling a bit blue, chum?  In need of a pick-me-up?  Never fear, Dr Cameron has just the tonic.  Get your ears around Cut And Run, the latest outing by the Chris Bevington Organisation – positively one of the most upbeat, good time albums so far this year.

Bassist Chris Bevington may have his name on the tin, but in terms of musical direction he’s got some top quality accomplices in the shape of multi-instrumentalist, producer and hit songwriter Scott Ralph, working in tandem with FM honcho Jim Kirkpatrick.  Between them this pair have not only turned out twelve indecently enjoyable original songs, they’ve also collaborated on production and mixing to give them a vibrant, knock your socks off sound.

"Look lively, there's a snapper!"

Regardless of the Ralph/Kirkpatrick axis though, this is an ensemble affair in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.  You want reference points?  Now and then the sound puts me in mind of a YouTube clip I saw of Clapton doing Freddie King’s ‘Tore Down’ with a big band.  Other times – bearing in mind that Jim Kirkpatrick is a frequent collaborator with Bernie Marsden – it suggests nothing so much as early Whitesnake blues-rock with horns.

The Clapton reference is relevant right from the off, as ‘It’s My Life’, with its rattling rhythm and harmonised guitar riffing, recalls one of my favourite Clapton recordings, ‘Motherless Children’.  And there are several more tracks to make you shake yer booty thereafter, starting with ‘Got To Know’, a tale of a “one time woman with a one track mind” on which Adrian Gibson’s trumpet and Mike Yorke’s sax really take flight for the first time. Later, ‘Rollin’’ features a grabbing, spiky riff and a knuckle-dusting guitar solo.  Best of all in the party mode though, is ‘Coming Down With The Blues’, a rollicking effort with a squawking trumpet solo from Gibson, injections of sax, and sassy backing vocals from Sarah Miller and Kate Robertson – the ladies’ contribution being as polished as you might expect from alumni of the Steely Dan tribute outfit Nearly Dan.

The Chris Bevington Organisation have more strings to their bow though, evidenced by the ballad ‘Won’t Daydream No More’, with its exquisite melody initially underpinned by sensitive backing vocals and Dave Edwards’ organ. And there’s more variety in the likes of ‘Sing Myself To Sleep’, which swings as woozily as the title suggests, and also the title track, which opens somewhere down the Mississippi with a megaphone-style vocal before rousing itself into something more raunchy, with some nifty slide playing from Kirkpatrick.  Meanwhile the engine room of Bevington on bass and Neil McCallum are especially to the fore with the lurching, offbeat rhythm of ‘Had Enough’, and the tub-thumping ‘Ain’t Got Nobody To Love’ with its urgent, stabbing horns.

Cut And Run is an album packed with good tunes, all delivered with energy, brio, and what you will, courtesy of some great playing and singing from all concerned.  It has variety, but it’s still tied together beautifully, courtesy of the arrangements and production.  I’m even impressed by the different-from-the-rest cover art – no geezers with guitars pics, but instead a continuation of the sequence of run-down building photos from the earlier albums.

If you want to listen to some ground-breaking piece of innovative music-making then forget it.  But if what you’re after is something to loosen your limbs at the end of the daily grind, then get in line – this is what fun sounds like, folks!