Bushwick Blooze Band unleash the powerful and gently building Lonely and Blue, showing off their love of classic blues.
Blues will never die. There’s just so much emotional turmoil invested in it that people love to get lost in. The Brooklyn-based Bushwick Blooze Band knows this is the case and are content to offer up that classic blues sound with powerful rhythms, steady beats, and that all-important wandering guitar solo. Track Lonely and Blue is exactly that and done very well.
Kicking in with some gut-wrenching, fuzzy blues guitar work, Brother Dave provides the backdrop for the sultry, gently-paced sound straight out the blues handbook. As the guitar tempers out and vocals slide in, we’re treated to a walking bassline, settled Hammond organ and docile drums holding it all together. The lyrics paint that perfect blues picture of heartache and melancholy as Brother Dave’s scratchy vocals solemnly creep around the chord structures: “Your beauty can’t cure me, it’s like a sunrise breaking through, but it means nothing if I can’t see you.”
The track goes on to tease letting itself go a couple of times before finally doing so with the beefy solo guitar entering the fray once more to wail, chime, buzz and spread itself over the steady beat anywhere it pleases. It becomes the second voice to the track in a way that only the guitar can, taking its time to build in complexity and vigor before vocals return with more fight and dexterity. It’s a trick that really adds emotion to the track and helps certify the 6-minute running time.
The way the track never gets boring is a testament to its hypnotizing blues-rock nature. The bass and drums create the ongoing, steady pace allowing the guitar and vocals to wonder where they please which culminates in a classic blues finish; long, jam-laden and powerful.
Lonely and Blue may not be anything revolutionary but it doesn’t need to be; it’s just good, honest blues. This is the sort of track you can sit back with your eyes closed and listen to, deep in your own thoughts, but it will also sound just as good in a live performance amongst crowds of people.
Score: 3.5/5
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