We haven’t had the chance to check out UK roots musician Mike Ross‘ solo debut album Spindrift, but we certainly like what we hear on the follow-up to it in Jenny’s Place (Taller Records), out tomorrow.
While the slow blistering blues and anguished vocals of the below “Dark Powder” is one we know you’ll appreciate — starting with a simmering, “Tin Pan Alley”-ish sound before picking up the tempo to a cool “The Thrill is Gone”-like groove and beyond by song’s end — the album offers a nice variety of rock, Americana, country, and alternative sounds, with shades of ZZ Top, Elvis Costello, Pink Floyd, and others throughout its tracks.
Other gems include the airy, uptempo Southern rocker “The Big Picture” and the raw, driving John Lee Hooker-meets-ZZ Top-sounding shuffle “Harpo”, with softer, more swaying numbers like the title track and closing “Loveslide” helping to balance things nicely to make Jenny’s Place one that you’ll enjoy the whole way through.
Here’s “Dark Powder”, which Ross describes as “a brooding 12/8 minor blues that invokes lyrically some of the pain, anguish and confusion that I have experienced in my journey of recovery through drug and alcohol dependency”: