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Paul Gillings—Mr Smith—Bad Monkey Records

“Mr Smith” is the third studio solo album from Paul Gillings, a harmoni-
ca player / singer songwriter from Lowestoft Suffolk.

The album opens with ‘Promo’ a blaster of an instrumental track with a
great harmonica vamp and some power guitar. ‘Short Straight Hair’
carries on where ‘Promo’ left off as another rasping instrumental.
‘Wasted Love’ is a rock blues offering featuring some top high register
harp playing.

The title track ‘Mr Smith’ has a more mellow touch to the accompani-
ment with some excessive delayed harp giving an almost ethereal feel to this instrumental. ‘Wind Down Af-
ter Work Blues’ is a slow blues instrumental whilst ‘Stand To The Right’ is a more orthodox blues rocker. The
album closes with the unusually titled, ‘Mouthuselah’ a full on harmonica blast.

Paul’s vocal delivery style with that delayed echo is reminiscent of the late Michael Hutchence from INXS.
Paul is ably supported with some good guitar work from Danny R but where Paul truly excels is with his har-
monica work. His intense driven style is somewhat similar to that of Sugar Blue and Paul has really mastered
this style of playing, indeed he is a top harmonica player.

My only criticism with this album is that the combination of overdriven guitar and overdriven harmonica can
become a bit tiresome on the ears after a while so it will be interesting to see where Paul takes his songwrit-
ing to next.

Ged Wilson

The Blues Against Youth—As The Tide Gets High And Low —
Escape From Today Records

In recent months I have started to come across more and more

Italian blues artists and I have been pretty much impressed with
what I had heard thus far. A new name to me, Gianni Tbay (aka
The Blues Against Youth) hails from Rome but is now resident in
Turin and has just released his sixth album so I am keen to give it
a listen.

The album opens with ‘Refugee’ a tragic tale underpinned with
some good acoustic slide guitar. ‘Goin’ To Chicago’ has a nice foot
tapping groove with some lovely backing vocals from Margherita Patrignani, really enjoyed this
one. There is more of a ragtime feel about ‘I’d Rather Hide Deep In The Backwoods’ with a good mix

of acoustic picking and slide guitar. There is an amusing intro and outro to ‘Goin’ To East Texas’
from the driver telling you the do’s and dont’s of riding onboard a Greyhound bus!

There is some nice harmonica work to be had on ‘Particle Filter Blues’ to accompany the slide guitar
on this upbeat blues. There is more of a country feel to the Cliff Carlisle song ‘Devils Train’ which

has a great whistling solo on it and the album closes with almost nine minutes of ‘Oblivion’.