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tackles a lot of issues on this album, his first for eight years.

The title describes the theme for this set – Brody’s path to overcoming his
addiction and creating a new life – as he sings on ‘Born To be Bad’, “it’s only taken

forty years and now I’m a brand new man” (I’ll leave you to guess how old he is).
The sound is generally raw and tough throughout, no-frills, not put-ons, the vocals

lived-in, the harmonica playing excellent - take a listen to his break in ‘Deadwood
Shuffle’ for a particularly fine example of his inventive playing.

Most of the tracks fall towards a high energy blues sound, it’s rock-y in one or two

places but there’s no impression that he’s playing blues-rock. ‘Working For The
Devil’ sounds a little like Creedence Clearwater Revival, but with slashing slide

guitar by Howard Mahan and blues harp, whilst ‘The Color Blue’ is a bluesy ballad.

Besides the harp and vocals, Brody also plays the lead guitar – he has worked as
a one-man-band – and Jackie Myers is on piano and organ, Jacque Garoutte on

bass, rhythm guitar and backing vocals, Terry Dry also on bass, Ian Pond drums
and Danielle Nicole supplying backing vocals to two songs. Nice to note too that

Brody references a couple of local artists with the last two songs of this gutsy CD.

Norman Darwen

THE 7:45s—Spinning—lRK Records

(www.lrkrecords.bandcamp.com)

Available on LP, CD and digitally, this debut set
from this Manchester-based outfit offers soul

music in all its vintage forms. Certainly all ten
tracks sound like they have come from slightly
used seven-inch 45s, as the band name suggests,
probably out of a now-retired dee-jays singles box

– some tracks out of a Wigan dee-jay’s 45 box
probably labelled “Detroit”.

Bass player and songwriter Sam Flynn has
assembled a tight band, with plenty of horns and backing vocalists, to back some

excellent singers tackling vintage soul and funk sounds. Try tracks like the opening
‘The Way I Love You’ or the tougher sounding ‘Tell Me No Lies’ with its raw,
distorted guitar work contrasting with the Motown-esque vocal of Nicole Battick,

who also tackles the slow, slightly bluesy, ‘How Could You’.

Of course, this being the north-west, there’s a very strong Northern soul stomper
in ‘Too Little Too Late’, and The Beatles ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’ is given a soul
veneer. Proceedings come to a finale with a tinge of disco on ‘We Will Be Friends’,

and the Stevie Wonder funk-jazz-soul inflections of ‘The Music’s Always There’.