Alastair Greene Band – Trouble at Your Door
Eclecto Groove Records
12 tracks/48 minutes
The marriage of blues and rock began decades ago and it renews it’s vows with a vengeance in this high energy set of original tunes from Alastair Greene and his band. Greene has been at this since 1997 and this is his fifth studio release since 2002 and he has also released a live album.
The band has changed a bit here and there and is now comprised of Jim Rankin on bass and Austin Beede on drums along with Greene on guitar and vocals. This is a powerful trio of musicians that pack a lot of punch in their music! Greene has toured with Alan Parsons as his guitar player and appeared on his 2004 album. He is the real deal and this CD proves it even more!
The trio blasts off with “People” and never looks back. A big slide guitar intro and lead along with Greene’s strident vocals grab the listener and gets them ready for a fun ride. Stellar guitar work! Except for the slide, more of the same follows in the title cut as the band gets into a groove and Green lays out some hot licks. “Back Where I Belong” offers more stinging-ly stellar guitar work. Greene breaks out the National Steel Guitar for “Red Wine Woman” and delivers a great solo performance of very traditional blues. Erik Norlander appears on Hammond organ “Back Where I Belong” and “Calling for You.” The former is a rock anthem sort of cut while the latter is a thoughtful, introspective, semi-psychedelic and very down tempo piece. They are a nice contrast and Norlander’s keys add a nice dimension.
“Love You So Bad” is a driving, high energy danceable tune with distorted vocals and another big, ringing guitar performance. On “Make the Devil’s Day” Greene builds from the verses through the choruses to another huge guitar solo.
“Strange Feeling” is another throwback to blues rock of the 70’s in it’s sound. Green once again lays it all all on his solo. “Pretty Price to Pay” is similar in nature and gets the blood circulating. He concludes with another “blues rock anthem” with heavy guitar; “The Sweetest Honey” is cruises perhaps into the sound of early southern rock (Marshall Tucker perhaps) and closes out a fine set of tunes.
Often I find albums heavy into the guitar to start to get boring; that was not the case here. Greene approaches his music and wields his axe strongly but with sufficient variety and mixed with his well-articulated and clean vocals. It was a lot of guitar but it was well done and something I could listen to repeatedly and enjoy without getting tired of. GO buy this and take this one on an end of summer car trip and get you motor running with Alistair Greene and his band- you won’t regret it!
