Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The music is an enigma and the man who plays it with such a sweet caress is the enlightenment of the age, the young man of Blues who has already swept down from the stage and gathered up hearts, souls and minds with Hurricane and Temperature Rising makes a return in 2016 with the fantastic Blood Money and it is an album that holds untold riches for the listener as they delve deeper and deeper into the sound provided by Danny Bryant.
Wealth is all too soon counted in possessions, in the calculation of the how much someone earns and not their value to someone’s heart or the difference they make to the wider world, Paul McCartney may be worth millions but he also brings so much pleasure to the world of music. It is in that same pleasure that the likes of Joe Bonamassa, Walter Trout, Joanne Shaw Taylor and Danny Bryant arguably relish with exhilarating melancholy. It is that sense of living guitar that soon seeps into the listener’s mind as the exchange of Blood Money takes place.
Produced once again by Richard Hammerton, Blood Money resonates with the deep breath of stimulation having been exercised, having been lit like a New Year’s Eve’s Sydney skyline, opulent, invigorating and braced ready for whatever the world may throw at it. It is the deep breath of intricate Blues that refuses to let go, that rejects the order to just hang loose and wade in the shadows that makes tracks such as the outstanding Slow Suicide, On The Rocks, the album’s title track, which features long time hero of Mr. Bryant, Walter Trout, and the thumping brilliance that is at the heart of Holding All The Cards all hold the listener close and the value of each note. Especially when those songs are played with a smile on the face alongside the legend Bernie Marsden on the song Just Won’t Burn, is calculated in how many hearts are rejuvenated by the sound and how many souls are saved by the enigmatic musician.
An album that continues the sterling work ethic displayed by Danny Bryant, Blood Money is an album that is quite simply, right on the money.
Danny Bryant’s Blood Money is released by Jazzhaus Records on Friday 29th January 2016
Ian D. Hall