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but with outstanding vocals from Danielle and the album closes with ‘Young Love on the Hill’ a
lovely melodic acoustic song, come in Steve Blacke on strings. I really liked Danielle’s previous
two solo albums and was waiting for the follow up but her previous label Concord dropped her
after releasing her Grammy-nominated album ‘Cry No More’. Covid and then the death of her
brother Kris brought further delays and eventually she decided to go ahead and make the album
and then look for a label to release it, eventually settling on Eric Corne’s Forty Below Records.
I’d love to say it’s been worth the wait and hassle but I’m afraid that I didn’t feel that this was as
good as the previous two releases, there are some excellent performances here but I felt there
were also too many mediocre, melancholy songs and that many of the songs and the overall
sound were too similar.

Graham Harrison

Chris O’Leary—The Hard Line—Alligator Records—ASIN
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Singer/harp player Chris O’Leary is a former member of Levon
Helm’s Barn Burners and also a former marine and police officer.
After releasing a number of albums on Bob Margolin’s Vizztone
label this is his debut for Alligator produced by himself and
credited to him rather than the Chris O’Leary Band and containing
all original material. We blast off with ‘No Rest’ with its high-
octane harp, riffing brass and Chris repeatedly hollering “so tired”
– but he has the energy to sing, play harp and also take the guitar
solos! ‘Lost My Mind’ is a swinging jump blues with distorted harp
and pounding barrelhouse piano from Jesse O’Brien and guitar from Chris Vitarello. ‘My Fault’
is classic Chicago blues with Chris alternating between vocals and harp and ‘I Cry at Night’ is a
dramatic slow blues with lead guitar from Monster Mike Welch.

‘Need for Speed’ is another jump blues, based around Brooks Milgate’s rolling piano with Chris
barking out the vocals and the story song ‘You Break It, You Brought It’ tells of a failed
relationship, with a powerful harp solo from Chris. ‘Who Robs a Musician?’ is another story song
- “stealing from the poor is wrong” – I’m guessing based on a true story and ‘Funky Little Club
on Decatur’ tells of Chris’s time playing in Levon’s club in New Orleans with second line brass
from Andy Stahl and Chris Difrancesco and slide guitar from Greg Gumpel. And we check out
with another rocker ‘Love’s for Sale’ with more pounding piano from Milgate and slashing slide
from Gumpel and over the top Chris’s powerful vocals and distorted harp playing. This is a fine
album with both Chris himself and the twenty-odd backing musicians all sounding great and I
was very impressed by Chris’s song writing which fits perfectly into the blues genre but has the
‘kitchen-sink’ authenticity and story telling more often associated with country music.

Graham Harrison
Almost Exactly…—The Cinelli Brothers—Proper Music
BBLP202433

The Cinelli Brothers are THE blues band in Britain at the moment,
although they aren’t like any of their contemporaries in that they
are younger and comprise two Italian brothers Marco (guitar,
keyboards, vocals) and Alessandro (drums, bass, vocals) alongside
Tom Julian Jones (guitar, harmonica, vocals) and Stephen Giry
(bass, guitar, vocals). And if you see them live they constantly
swap lead vocalists as well as instruments in a dizzying whirl that