From Paul Cowley, a banquet of stripped back blues, for both beggars and billionaires.

AN EFFECTIVE ANTIDOTE

First off the pile for 2026 is this refreshing slice of simplicity, ideal for the austerity that January demands, after the excesses of the season. If blues is your bag, acoustic blues at that, this’ll hit the spot just fine, an effective antidote for swollen livers and lighter wallets. Cowley is a name I know only vaguely, and this may well be the first time I have listened to his music. Back in a dim and distant, he was the architect behind, or one of them, Sutton Blues Collective.

Sutton as in Coldfield, not Surrey, a group of individuals intent on promoting the blues all across the Birmingham Delta, and bringing the best of it to the leafy suburbs. This was despite, effectively, not picking up a guitar much until attaining 40. A tad older and, possibly, wiser, it is Brittany he currently makes his home, but the blues is still the light that shines his bright.

This is perhaps his third from his new home, not that that, in any way, has dulled his debt to country blues, if of quite another Birmingham. Largely just he, his guitar, and (mostly) his own songs, these 11 songs show the timelessness of the idiom, glad to be waking up this, and every, morning, intent on committing his muse to this music. And, I believe this to be important, all these songs were recorded standing up, with the three microphones all not moving from the positions set for the opener, and not moving again until being put back in their boxes, with the songs recorded in order over a period of several months.

HAPPY IN HIS OWN SCUFFED BOOTS

It is that opener, Time, that comes up first. From the moment the notes start to tumble from his fingers you can tell this is class, with already the idea seeded, of a troubadour, happy in his own scuffed boots. You know just how is he is going to sound, and, just as you expect a dusty larynx along the lines of a Knopfler or a Rea, so that is delivered. Deliciously languid, this time isn’t a jet plane, more a rickety cart, despite the words trying to tell the contrary. Bighitter is then, and deliberately, a formulaic blues, the sort so easy to do badly, and so much harder to convince.

Me? Well, put it this way, I was checking the credits as to authorship, expecting it to be way older than me. Understated bass and drums, from Pascal Ferrari, who also mixed and mastered the album, add a slo-mo current, moving inexorably to the levée. Some slippy slide adds the perfect credential to this new old time classic from Cowley.

NO RELATION…

Old Man, no relation to Shakey’s song of the same name, glistens in the light of some slinky harp, of the sort where you can see the players hands fanning out, like wings, around his instrument. I always love that and Rob Venables, the player here, hits the target effortlessly. Ferrari is still holding tight the groove and all is well. Back to basics, and a solo skip, sorry, through Skip James’ Crow Jane, which brings out all the melodies the ignorant fail to believe can be found in such fare. Which is the perfect intro for the title track, which lopes into a sure-footed slo-mo shimmy. A song that references neither Brum nor Brittany, the long shadows are those of the Dyfi valley, in Eryi, North Wales, where Cowley has a family cottage. A gorgeous atmospheric of a song.

SHOOGLY SHUFFLE

First Born is, as are many the self-penned songs here, autobiographical, with bottleneck bends to complement the world-weary narrative. Real life also informs Dirt Poor, or some of it, surely the first song ever to cover a chicken having a prolapse. One of those shoogly shuffles that sound tossed off in an instant. Unless you’ve ever tried. The drums return and keep up with nagging insistence. One of those songs for when your dog done died, even if that doesn’t actually happen. But, prolapse and all, the chicken provides for a happy, if probably tough, ending.

Once In A While inhabits that similar Jagger/Richard space that informs Beggar’s Banquet and Sticky Fingers, with effectively unambiguous acoustic picking and a vocal yet to descend into pastiche. That mood is then picked up and run with, for Where Are You Now, so much that you wouldn’t be surprised if Keef were to wrap his ragged tonsils around it. And whilst that would be good, better still is it with Cowley’s strongest vocal of the album, the mood enhanced further by Ferrari’s lap steel, giving the full Wild Horse to the moment. The song that makes the set, this would be a good album without it, but, with it, it is great.

CLASSY

A nod now to Cowley’s guv’nor, with Train I Ride, a song by Fred McDowell, one of the prime influences leading to Cowley picking up a guitar in the first place. A classic train song, it is the epitome of rural blues, long before the electric came. Which itself is, almost, acknowledged for a torpid, in a good way, stumble through Same Thing. Neither Muddy Waters nor Willie Dixon, the author, did it quite so studiedly slow, but, you find yourself wishing they did, the speed unearthing a nuance absent in theirs. Like I said earlier, track one, no less, classy!

Cowley’s bio suggests he visits the UK once or twice each year, otherwise content to be a mainstay of the Breton blues circuit. Let’s hope the next trip is soon. (Ed. It is!)

Here’s the title track:

Paul Cowley: Website

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