Bucky O’Hare – The Sun’s Light Is Hazy | Album Review

Bucky O’Hare – The Sun’s Light Is Hazy

Self-produced CD

www.buckyohare.bandcamp.com

9 songs – 51 minutes

Based out of Southeastern Massachusetts and a fret master who terms his music “slide guitar soul jazz” — an improvised style that often incorporates elements of funk, bluegrass and more, Bucky O’Hare cuts new ground and serves up a treat with this sophomore release, exploring his love for electronic percussion and indulging in his love for hip-hop, too.

A familiar face across the New England blues scene — and in the pages of Blues Blast where he’s been on the writing staff for years, Bucky produced this effort during the pandemic, but the six originals and three covers contained within are free of the usual subject matter that those discs often contain. Instead, it gives the world a chance to hear the sounds that represent his unique style of attack, voice and songwriting skills for the first time.

It was recorded in various basements and home studios in Norton, Weymouth and West Newton, Mass., Narragansett, R.I., and Tampa Bay, Fla., mixed by Andre Cantave and David Messier at Same Sky Productions in Austin, Texas, and mastered back home by Bobby Kane at The Bauchery in Mansfield, Mass.

O’Hare handles guitars, vocal and percussion programming here with backing from Antonio Forte on keys, Matt Mahoney handles bass on the first five tracks and contributes nylon string guitar on another, and Mike Tworoger contributes the bottom on the remaining four numbers. Both bassists provide backing vocals throughout, and Shelley Tworoger lends her voice to one song, too.

A cover of the Albert King classic, “I’ll Play the Blues for You,” opens the action in a style that you’ve never heard before. In O’Hare’s hands it turns into a sultry solo number punctuated by his deep and smoky baritone delivery and single-note guitar runs. His approach to percussion ranges from a rock-simple, steady beat at the open that progresses through interesting changes making the six-string throughout. A brief instrumental run introduces the original, “See You in the Rain,” a medium-paced, syncopated shuffle that offers encouragement and offers up a meeting with a lady when she’s feeling down.  O’Hare has a  somewhat limited but adequate vocal range.

The mid-tempo, eight-minute instrumental, “Patricia’s Theme,” gives Bucky a chance to bring his six-string talents to the fore, infusing elements that hint at gypsy jazz and giving Forte and Mahoney space to workout, too, before Howlin’ Wolf’s familiar stop-time pleaser, “Three Hundred Pounds of Joy,” receives a hip-hop overhaul that maintains the blues element in such a manner that lovers of the medium will find interesting.

The dark “My Lady Switchblade” – which first appeared on O’Hare’s debut 2014 release — gets new life and a haunting new arrangement to follow and flows into the dissonant “Collapse Depth,” a number that envisions stealing a submarine and exploring the ocean’s bottom to escape pursuit. Then O’Hare delivers an acoustic and instrumental, seven-minute version of Stevie Wonder’s “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers,” successfully adapting stylings first laid down instrumentally by Jeff Beck in the ‘70s.

The rhythm’s slow and steady for the cautionary “When Your Number Comes Up,” which promises someone facing punishment for an unspoken offense that Bucky will serve as a witness at the reckoning when justice is served. It gives way to the upbeat “Evolving Heart,” which opens with an observation about lovers to open and shifts to a promise of a better life to close.

Bucky O’Hare serves up something that’s different here. His ideas and his fretwork are fresh. This one just might be for you!

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