Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
If not now, then when? There is always a job to do, a chore to update or a task that requires your attention, however in the best of worlds they would be dismissed, they would play second fiddle to the creative urge and the often snide remarks or frustration that comes with such yearnings, they would be relegated to the muted and the silenced. We set ourselves goals or the faint whisper of dreams but we rarely fully achieve them, Time having this peculiar habit of making sure we forget to wind our clock onwards, to set the alarm of when completion dates are due.
The Blues has been on the crest of a wave the last decade, coming out of its arguably depressing funk in which few bands or artists at least lightened the load during the down years of the late 80s and 90s. Wherever you look, from Joe Bonamassa through to Joanne Shaw Taylor, the resurgence of Robert Cray and beyond, the Blues again is relevant, more than that it is vital and has become, like Jazz, a unifying agent in the fight against mediocrity and passionless exploits.
The Cinelli Brothers, Italian by birth, but very much boundary-less Blues driven, have stepped up to this large and imposing podium with charm and their own stature intact and told the audience, the listeners and the want to be’s that Time waits impatiently, time is forever hungry and woe betide the ignoring plea of Babe Please Set Your Alarm; to flout the grace of this album is to put down the genre and walk backwards to the period when Blues in all honesty was about as welcome as a tick on the skin of a dog.
Soulfully aggressive, velvet silk to the ears, Babe Please Set Your Alarm is old school fascination, in its recording and delivery style, the image of the Blues being crowded around in a bar deep in the Mississippi heartlands, heads nodded in agreement, the Blues Harp lauded as much as the expressive and mournful guitar to which songs bow their heads in deference, this is the alarm call you will find touching and siren like.
In tracks such as Your Lies, Don’t Hold Back And Love Me, their reading of Willie Dixon’s Back Door Man, One More Minute Over Me and the remarkable cover of Prince and the Revolution’s Kiss, The Cinelli Brothers, Alessandro and Marco, alongside harmonica player Rollo Markee, bassist Enzo Strano and Albert Manuzzi on Wurlitzer, play to the crowd and the gallery with deep affection and glorious insight, whilst all the time dictating their own timing, the alarm firmly in their hands and one in which the bell rings true.
The Cinelli Brothers release Babe Please Set Your Alarm on 18th May.
Ian D. Hall