Celso Salim & Darryl Carriere – About Time
Wide Tracks Recordings
10 songs – 47 minutes
Despite making music together for over 20 years, About Time is the first collaborative effort from the Brazilian guitarist, Celso Salim, and the Californian harmonica player, Darryl Carriere, and it’s a total joy.
The album features 10 original compositions, all written in a classic blues style and played vigor, verve and no little technical virtuosity. Opening with “BBQ”, which has one foot in straight blues and one in serious soul, Salim and Carriere use the concept of a barbecue as a lyrical metaphor for their relationship with a woman. Things really get cooking with the next number, “Sweet Thing”, a riotous West Coast swing number with some stunning guitar from Salim.
Salim and Carriere are both masters of their instruments, but also play delightfully together, exhibiting deep chemistry but never treading on each other’s musical toes. They share lead vocals, often harmonizing together, and are backed superbly by Mike Hightower on bass and vocals and David Kida on drums and percussion. Hightower also produced the album together with Salim.
Carriere often uses his harp to fix the initial melody of a song, as on the funky “Please Stop” or on “Get Along”, whilst then weaving between the vocal lines. “Please Stop” features some glittering electric slide guitar from Salim, while he whips out a wah for the latter track. Solos are shared roughly equally, and on tracks like the upbeat “Sadie” it’s a joy to hear the musicians interact and play off each other.
Carriere takes the majority of the lead vocals, with Salim fronting on three tracks. Both have excellent, road-worn, emotionally connected voices. Carriere’s reading of the slow blues, “In Your Arms”, is particularly affecting. On the Dobro-driven “With My Friends”, the pair harmonize to great effect.
The duo co-wrote all the songs on About Time other than the acoustic country blues of “Here With You”, which is a solo Salim effort. And the songs stay totally true to the blues tradition whilst in the main avoiding the traditional 12-bar blues structure. The uptown Chicago shuffle of “Love On A Shelf” is a fine example of how to write a song that is totally a blues song but which uses a very unusual structure.
About Time finishes with another acoustic track, “Make You Mine”, that features only vocals, guitar and harmonica and gives Carriere the opportunity to lay down one of his best solos on the album.
The only shame about the album is that it’s so short (just over three-quarters of an hour). Then again, it does make the listener eagerly look forward to the next one.
Recorded at Wide Tracks Noho Studio, About Time is an absolute gem of a modern blues recording. Highly recommended.
