Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
When the annals of 21st Century Blues are written there will be names that are assured to note only feature heavily within the factually written pages but will be seen as true luminaries and icons of the genre; those that arguably saved the music from dying a death that had been telegraphed since the mid-1980s.
Chiefly amongst them will be the undoubted Queen of British Blues, one who has herself been influenced and aided by the likes of Joe Bonamassa, but has forged her own indomitable style and taken all in her path from the Midland’s heartlands of her birth to the wilds of America and back, the creator of all that is Black & Gold, Joanne Shaw Taylor.
Produced by the legendary Kevin Shirley, whose own accomplished work includes Black Country Communion, Beth Hart, Joe Satriani, and Iron Maiden, as well as the aforementioned Joe Bonamassa, Joanne Shaw Taylor returns to spotlight with her brand new opus, Black & Gold and with assuredness of her standing within the Blues community, the sound of a dramatic pulse is pushed out into the open with outrageous force, but also with a guiding hand that shapes the notes provided and the lyrics entailed with a heart pulsating with love and affection for the themes tackled and expressed over.
Never one to hold back on communicating the insistence of the Blues, the album is a hotbed of creativity which stands alongside the musician’s other works with style, brevity, and demanding insight, and as tracks such as All The Things I Said, Who’s Gonna Love Me Now, I Gotta Stop Letting You Let Me Down, the superb and heartfelt Look What I’ve Become, and What Are You Gonna Do Now? gently implore the meanings of love, rejection, betrayal, and peace upon the listener resounds in the glory of instrument and the mind behind the music.
Black & Gold marks Joanne Shaw Taylor’s tenth solo studio album with absolute recognition, of honouring her past involvement of revitalising the genre, but also looking forward as she enters a period in time when experience counts more and more to the legendary status that she is certain to attain.
Gloriously produced, wonderfully performed, an album that carries on the fine distinction of a woman from the heartlands of the British Midlands with honour.
Ian D. Hall