Into the Blues
Into the Blues is the album that Joan Armatrading was always meant to write. Immediately you can tell how much she enjoys playing the blues as...
Into a Blues is a manuscript which Joan Armatrading was regularly meant to write. Immediately we can discuss it how most she enjoys personification a sadness as her guitar belts out these thirteen hits.On a surface, yes, this is a sadness album; mostly, though, it’s a Joan Armatrading album–which equates to she’ll follow sadness forms as good as conceits wherever she damn good pleases. On “Liza,” she takes a “Mannish Boy” slit opposite a marks for a pick-up upon a wrong side of town; upon “There Ain’t a Girl Alive (Who Likes t
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(out of twenty-three reviews)
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Review by the bomba for Into the Blues
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The hugely influential and pioneering British singer-songwriter, is back with a brand new studio CD.
The reclusive legend tries her hand at the blues and proves quite a dab hand at it.
She basically plays everything here bar the drums and manages to inject everything with a sense of drive and passion. As always, her silky-smooth voice is the real star.
Joan’s new album is the latest in a long line of fabulous releases dating back to her wonderfully successful breakthrough albums in the late 70s and early 80s such as Show Some Emotion, To the Limit and Me Myself I .
She remains an utterly compelling writer and performer of unique warmth.
She cites “Into The Blues” as her best work yet.
“I’ve wanted to make an album that truly reflected me and I think this does. I love the blues and while each song is very different there’s a cohesive thread that runs throughout”.
Her 19th album is a celebration the blues, which she describes as “the bedrock of modern music”.
Her rich, mellow vocal suits the blues, as does her accomplished guitar playing.
She really enjoys playing all those well-oiled blues riffs on her trusty electric guitar to ornament her compositions.
One of them, “Baby Blue Eyes”, features some impressive acoustic strumming, which adds a more earthy texture.
Always bold and unpredictable, Joan Armatrading has come to Muddy Waters relatively late, but better late than never.
This is an eclectic mix of blues-inspired songs that should please her loyal fans.
Review by Tankery for Into the Blues
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Since I saw this tiny young woman with this incredibly rich voice on a stage in Illinois somewhere in the early 80s, I have followed Joan with every album.
This is by and large one of her best albums ever. It’s bluesy, yes, but it also showcases her incredible voice even on the non-blues songs and such songs as Baby Blue Eyes and There Aint a Girl alive are good examples.
The music has never been more varied and interesting. DNA is a masterpiece of rock and roll and of course the numerous traditional hard blues songs ala Buddy Guy show just how talented Ms. Armatrading is.
This album should not be missed by one of Rock’s most underated and influencial artists.
Review by Alan Dorfman for Into the Blues
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For decades Joan Armatrading has been adored as an articulate troubador singing about matters of the heart, a singer-songwriter who was too soulful to pigeon-hole as a folksinger but whose superbly dispassionate delivery only highlighted the passion of her subject matter.
If that’s what you’re looking for, you will not find it here. Joan has plugged in and recreated standard blues, getting downright giddy in this “woe is me” art form. For example, on the title tune “Into The Blues,” with its haunting keyboards, Joan sings “the blues are here to make you glad you took a different path.” On “Play The Blues” she sings “Baby when you sing the blues I take all my clothes off for you” and on the celebratory “Deep Down” the standard blues is boiled down to one sentence “I love you baby – deep down.” No doom and gloom here.
The purest blues song thematically on the CD is probably “Empty Highway” with its “I stand outside in my underwear and watch the gentle rain fall down” refrain. The variety of the blues here is wide, from the poppy, acoustic “Baby Blues Eyes” with its anti-depressive lyric “those little imperfections are what I love about you/baby blue eyes and the smile of an angel” to the sothern fried reminiscence of “Mama Papa” which brings early Tina Turner to mind, to the uptempo blues shuffle of “D.N.A.” and the straight up rocking blues of “There Ain’t A Girl Alive” which is a screed about a vain woman that just cries out to be covered by The Rolling Stones.
Personally my favorite is the evocative “Secular Songs” which successfully lyrically walks the fine line of lambasting the changes in religion while reaffirming our ongoing need for spiritual growth (“They’re singing secular songs in the churches/and there’s not a word of God/It’s all Schubert and Beethoven or lots of French love songs”)
From the opening strains of the propulsive “A Woman In Love” to the closing notes of the explosive “Something’s Gotta Blow” with its doubletracked vocal, “Into The Blues” is sheer brilliance, the fully mature display of an outstanding artist willing to tinker with the expected and take risks. Joan Armatrading finally lets loose and shows some emotion and the results are superior, all the more so for being so unexpected. This is a CD you’ll be listening to for a long, long time.
Review by Author-Poet Aberjhani for Into the Blues
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Although her official website describes Joan Armatrading’s new CD, INTO THE BLUES, as being “blues influenced” rather than a straightforward blues album, the songs on it achieve exactly what the best of blues music does. They take us deep inside the raw agonies and ecstasies of life, love, and the struggle to live at peace with ourselves and the world. That drama is one Armatrading has set to superb guitar-playing that rivals (with all due respect) that of such icons as BB King, Eric Clapton, Prince, and Bruce Springsteen. Add to her artistry a voice which can boom like a Chicago baritone or caress like the sweetest ingénue and it becomes easy to see why this CD shot straight to number one on Billboard Magazine’s blues chart.
On the title track of this phenomenal set, Armatrading proclaims, “My baby don’t like rock and roll/ Not hip hop or pop/ My baby’s just into the blues,” then proceeds to deftly demonstrate why. We can debate whether the “baby” of which she’s singing is a favorite lover or her guitar. But one thing not in question is the serious skill with which Armatrading explores various forms of the blues–rock, gospel, ballad–throughout the CD’s 13 dynamic cuts.
The trademark finesse with which she’s known to dissect the most intimate of relationships are in full play on the first two songs, “A Woman in Love” and “Play the Blues.” She is particularly heart-wrenching on the mournfully plaintive “Empty Highway,” which broods and croons and bleeds with the best of any blues ballad on record. “Baby Blue Eyes” is a blue-grass tinged number that evokes the soulful country traditions of an Allison Krauss or the Dixie Chicks. She moves beyond romantic introspection for some powerful social and spiritual commentary on both “Secular Songs” and the explosive eight-minute-long closer “Something’s Gotta Blow.” In the biographical “Mama Papa,” fans get a rare treat as Armatrading pays tribute to her birth island of St. Kitts and the industrious parents who taught her to: “Play hard/ Fight fair/ Live life/ And love the Lord.”
From the very beginning of Joan Armatrading’s amazing career, starting with the 1972 release of WHATEVER’S FOR US, the rhythms and colors of the blues and jazz have helped define the brilliant depths and substance of her work. Also from the very beginning, Armatrading has demonstrated an uncanny ability to employ various musical trends and genres to amplify the uniqueness of her own creative voice. Those two traits serve her genius exceedingly well on INTO THE BLUES, a CD very much on its way to becoming a celebrated classic.
by Author-Poet Aberjhani
author of I Made My Boy Out of Poetry
and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts on File Library of American History)
Review by Jiri Schwarz for Into the Blues
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I fell in love with Joan in the mid-70′s after hearing her Back To the Night album (vinyl issued 1975; so sad it is currently unavailable on CD) and her 3rd album called simply Joan Armatrading (1976). I was extremely charmed by her vocal (smooth & husky & strong & natural, capable of unbelievable finesses, which were, however, very functional and devoid of any signs of exhibitionism). She had an outstanding technique of tone forming which varied with every syllable she sang. The other point was she was a fantastic song-write of beautiful melodies, performed with great feeling, only occassionally bluesy. Her lyrics has been also delightful, sensitively marking the intimate spaces between two people. I came back to JA in the early 80′s (Me, Myself, I album, 1980) and then again, I somewhat forgot about her (being principally a rock fan). Then it took me another 15 years to get astonished for the third time, by means of her fantastic comeback with the album What’s Inside (1995). I thought this was to be her last masterpiece … and I did not expect she might ever level this.
It is now her curent album that shook me again. It preserves all the above mentioned attributes of JA’s art, but, in addition, it indeed extends them. (I cannot recall many in the showbiz world that would be artistically growing and maturing being aged 57 – the majority can at best level previous efforts, but never go beyond). Joan’s vocal darkened a bit, maybe as a consequence of the repertoire she performs. Although more than one half of the new songs are principally bluesy things (as indicated by the title of the album), it is incredible how Joan’s creativity made the whole album so variable in mood, tempo, instrumentations. From the gloomy balads (the bluesy Empty Highway) to solidly rocking pieces (Deep Down, held on one single chord; There Ain’t a Girl Alive); from her inventive classical song-writing (A Woman In Love; Baby Blues Eyes) to the classical electric blues things (My Baby’s Gone; Liza). You may notice traces of funky, reggae, boogie, also gospel (Secular Songs). Another point is the instrumentation – as always, first-class. We used to hear many well-known studio musicians with her in the past – now Joan performes everything on her own with the exception of drums. There are wondeful guitar solos (some even aggressively rocking – There Ain’t a Girl Alive), if not to mention the numerous tiny blues miracles she produces on her guitar. On one of the tracks (Baby Blue Eyes), her guitar playing even reminds of old Velvet Underground. The bass lines are perfect as well. Even the mouth harp appears (simple, but powerful). No backing vocals – just perfect overdubbs of her own. And last but not least – the lyrics. Simply you trust her, the charming lady, so open without any pretending in love affairs (..when you sing the blues, I’ll take off my clothes for you). Surprisigly, even autobiographic (Mama and Papa) and social themes from an immigrant milieu appear, a feature I was not used to with Joan. The closing, slowly gradating bluesy song (Something’s Gotta Blow) with the socially oriented lyrics is really overwhelming. Amen. We’ve heard the trinity of words, singing and music of JA, a mature woman who has created an extremely mature piece of art.