Sireena 2024
The Preacher
Outlining a scope of his sonic palette, British axeman grinds it out to delicious pellets of sentimental substance.
Back in 1995, when Innes Sibun took part in the “Rattlesnake Guitar” album, paying tribute to Peter Green and holding his own alongside such giants of bluesy six strings as Rory Gallagher, Kim Simmonds and Dave Peverett, the British artist’s credentials as former Robert Plant sidekick instantly became obsolete as his talent got defined once and for all. Still, despite an array of impressive solo records Sibun released since then, it took him three decades to deliver a platter whose stylistically eclectic pieces feel organic, although that hardly was Innes’ intent because he simply wanted to project a variety of moods on a genre-blank canvas. As a result, the veteran’s tenth studio opus is thrillingly profound and vibrantly invigorating.
The listener doesn’t have to wait for the latter half of “The Preacher” to feel it, although the boisterous “Jump For Joy” might signal the purest statement of Sibun’s mastery of twang and tone, his no-frills approach to the instrument focusing the number’s nuclear energy; to sense it, one must hear Innes wordlessly sing on “Time Is Tight” in unison with his fingerwork or witness him feed electric arabesques into the fiber of “Incantation” which opens the album with much gusto and intrigue before fluid riffs make a Hammond-bolstered appearance. But then, there’s also the deeply emotional, albeit aurally transparent and finely filigreed, “Freya’s Smile” – which slyly quotes a certain Charlie Chaplin’s tune and which features another Charlie, and another Plant associate, Jones, on bass – and the reflective, if muscular and groovy, titular track that reveal the guitarist’s love for trad jazz and allow him to go off on a tangent in search of fresh wonders. One of those will be the arrival of vocal cuts in the record’s flow, Marcus Malone stepping up to the microphone for the molasses-gloomy “I Found Your Letter” and, further down the line, the punchy “Let It Go” to let his friend, in turn, stream tears from the fretboard and strut with a lot of swagger across the slider-caressed chords – like he does, weaving a delicate lace, on “Inky” that ventures into fusion and flamenco.
Factor in an elegant take on “Sunny” which, splashed with Anders Olinders’ piano and organ and spiced with a few Santana-flavored licks, marries performative grace to soulful delving into the Bobby Hebb evergreen, and the funky “Red Beans” which infectiously rides the wah-wah pedal, and let the reprise “Time Is Tight” bring it all to a close to imply that time is right too, and the question of whether Innes Sibun’s entitled to join the host of British paragons of blues should become obsolete as well.
*****
