Page 53 - BiTS_05_MAY_2025

ZZ Ward—Liberation—Sun Records ASIN
:‎B0DQVXSP4K

By the age of twelve ZZ Ward was singing in her
father’s blues band, although her career has since
also included rock, indie, soul and hip-hop as well
as blues. Her second album “The Storm” reached
No.1 on Billboard’s blues album chart and this her
fourth album was produced by Ryan Spraker who
also co-wrote the original songs here with ZZ, as
well as adding his guitar, bass and keyboards to
the record. Other musicians involved are Cooper
Nelson (saxophone), Russell Nygaard (trumpet)
Kevin Barry (lap steel) and Dave Brophy (drums).
The original song ‘Mother’ starts us off with ZZ’s voice being relatively ‘light’ but
also filled with emotion, tasty covers of Arthur Crudup’s ‘My Baby Left Me’, Jon
Hamilton’s ‘I Have No One’ and Tommy Minga’s ‘Cadillac Man’ follow. As well as
ZZ’s voice - which isn’t what you would expect from a woman blues singer (probably
down to her experience in other genres) - what also stands out here is Ryan
Spraker’s skill on guitars and keyboards.

ZZ wrote ‘Love Alive’ after the breakup of a long-term relationship and presumably
the title track was the result of coming to terms with this and moving on and
‘Lioness’ completes the process with her being “stronger than I’ve ever been before”.
We get a cover of Son House’s ‘Grinning in Your Face’ (which ZZ has recorded several
times during her career) with some nice electric slide guitar and there’s more of it
on a fairly routine version of ‘Dust My Broom’ but I did like the dramatic reading of
Lowell Fulson’s ‘Sinner’s Prayer’ and the lazy, loping take on Chris Kenner’s
‘Something You Got’ which for me was the album’s standout. We finish with two
originals, the ballad ‘Clairvoyant’ with its restrained brass and the noisy rocker ‘Next
to You’. I liked the combination of original songs and covers here and also ZZ’s voice
which doesn’t fall into the cliché of screaming and rasping out the lyrics, with both
Mr. Spraker’s playing and production also being very impressive.

Graham Harrison

Allison August—August Moon—Momojo
Records ASIN : B0DSCG1F8Z

This is Allison August’s second album - with the
first ‘Holy Water’ being recorded nine years ago -
and some of these tracks have been around for
some time featuring as they do Little Feat guitarist
Paul Barrere who died in 2019 and keyboard
wizard Mike Finnigan who we lost in 2021. The
first two songs here ‘Afraid of Love’ and ‘Dashboard
Madonna’ have a distinct Little Feat vibe with a
funky beat, brass, backing singers and sinuous
slide guitar and with Allison’s light but strident
voice over the top. She’s joined on vocals by
Sugaray Rayford on the soulful ‘I Won’t Say No’ and ‘What Would Mama Say’ is quite
jazzy and sultry while the only non-original song here ‘Honey Jar’ by the Wood