Gary Moore – ‘Back To The Blues’ (BMG)

By Jim Rowland

In these days of the resurgence of vinyl in all its heavyweight, colour and splatter splendour, it’s sometimes easy to forget that back in the Nineties and Noughties, vinyl was considered such a thing of the past that there were huge numbers of major release albums that never got a vinyl release at all. Such was the case with Gary Moore’s 2001 blues rock classic ‘Back To The Blues’. Now for the first time ever, it finally gets a vinyl release as a heavyweight double album.

It’s certainly the case that record companies are queuing up to cash in on the vinyl resurgence revolution at the moment. Modern vinyl issues, although quite pricey, and usually over double the price of the CD equivalent, do tend to be of very good quality these days – nice thick pressings often properly remastered for vinyl. Gone are the days of the late 70s/early 80s when a vinyl pressing would be so thin it resembled Rolf Harris’ wobble board, or a colour pressing was a novelty item where the sound quality was just rubbish. So there’s plenty of albums still out there from the Nineties/Noughties waiting for that first vinyl release, and ‘Back To the Blues’ is one such album most worthy of a quality vinyl pressing, which is what we have here in heavyweight double vinyl format.

Released in 2001, and Moore’s 13^th solo album, ‘Back To The Blues’ harked back to the sound of the hugely successful ‘Still Got The Blues’ and ‘After Hours’ albums a decade earlier. Moore assembled a new band, holed up in a good live room and under the supervision of the legendary Chris Tsangarides, cooked up this raw, rockin’ blues album in little over a month from start to finish, comprising a mixture of six Moore originals and four old blues standards associated with Brit blues legend John Mayall.

Tracks like ‘You Upset Me Baby’, ‘Cold Black Night’ and ‘Ain’t Got You’ have a spontaneous energy to them, attributed to the faster pace of the recording process compared to previous albums, whilst ‘Picture Of the Moon’ and the instrumental ‘The Prophet’ have a softer feel echoing the vibe of ‘Parisienne Walkways’.

Moore originals like ‘Enough of the Blues’, ‘How Many Lies’ and the aforementioned ‘Cold Black Night’ show that the man could still pen a cracking tune at this stage, and the subtle ‘Drowning In Tears’, another quality Moore original, illustrates the clear influence of Peter Green. All in all, ‘Back To The Blues’ is one cracking blues rock album.

‘Back To The Blues’ is released on double heavyweight black vinyl housed in a gatefold sleeve and contains new liner notes written by Dave Everley. The album will also be released both digitally and on CD and all formats contain three bonus tracks – ‘Picture Of The Moon (Single Edit)’, ‘Cold Black Night (Live At VH1)’ and ‘Stormy Monday (Live At VH1)’.

‘Back To The Blues’ is released on Friday (13 October).