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Got Going On’, with a lovely vocal and arrangement. The closing ‘That’s What Makes Me Smile’
is a nicely positive piece of Americana, rounding out a rather nice album all round.
Norman Darwen

(www.durhamcountypoets.com)

Matty T. Wall—Live Down Underground—Independent

Matty T. Wall is an Australian blues-rock guitarist and singer,
but that description doesn’t really cover what’s on offer on
this live CD. The palpable sense of excitement that you can
tell is there doesn’t come across in that description, for sure.

This is powerhouse blues-rock; he’s a strong and very
talented guitarist of course, but he’s also a strong vocalist.
Mind you, there are a few instrumentals allowing Matty to
show off his considerable guitar chops – the second track,

‘Slideride’, even comes across like a rough and rowdy Hound
Dog Taylor piece.
He can also handle things solo, as on the tricksy ‘Sophia’s Strut’, giving the rhythm section of

Leigh Miller on bass and Rick Whittle on drums a couple of minutes break. He even tackles
the slow blues-based ‘Voodoo Chile’ – not the better-known “Slight Return” please note, but
the more psychedelic and much longer blues. And he does it very well.

Blues-rockers should certainly check out Matty T. Wall. He remembers to keep his blues-rock
bluesy and he certainly deserves credit for that as it isn’t always the case nowadays.
Norman Darwen

(www.mattytwall.com)

Jay & the Cooks—Dried up Dreams—Juste Une Trace

Jay Ryan is an American singer and guitarist, long-time resi-
dent in France; his previous album was entirely in French but
this is in English all the way. So, he’s rather individual, but let’s
add that, at the end of the 60s, he was playing trombone in a
Chicago marching band, discovering the blues a couple of
years later. He lived in Austin, Texas, then in New York during
the onslaught of punk, and moved to France in 1980, having
sold his bass to buy a plane ticket. Once there, he worked as a
cook and formed a blues band; he’s since recorded a good
number of albums.

So yes, he is something a little out of the mainstream, as is this album. It’s blues, and blues-rock
(try the opening, seemingly autobiographical ‘Alton McCarver’, the pulsing ‘Chew The Cud’, or
the slightly Hill country sounding ‘Poor Everybody’), and pretty much remains so throughout,