Chris O’Leary
★★★★
The Hard Line
ALLIGATOR. CD/DL/LP
New dispatches from the front line of the blues.
O’Leary is a tough singer and a powerful harmonicaplayer, but what raises him above the ruck – and what has no doubt earned him a place in the Alligator catalogue – is his inventive songwriting. He doesn’t drift far from conventional blues formats, but his subjects are often novel, and even when they aren’t, his angle on them is always surprising and his language fresh and cliché-free, as in Lost My Mind or the rueful You Break It, You Bought It. Or take the sadly familiar road story of Who Robs A Musician?: “You can tell by the Chevy my wallet ain’t heavy, still got dents from the last three collisions… I gotta ask myself: what kinda sonofabitch robs a musician?” The band, headed by guitarist Chris Vitarello, is stone-solid.