Energetic, but impersonal blues rock from Belfast's great guitar hero.

It seems rather inconsistent to start off the album ‘Back To The Blues’ with the track ‘Enough Of The Blues’, but it’s typical Gary Moore to do so. When he released the experimental and unsuccessful ‘A Different Beat’ in 1999, he performed a brilliant concert at Drobak. When I again saw him in Bergen last year, he was back to the pompous attitude. And now he feels the need to return to the blues roots.

He tricks us cleverly with a 36 second long intro with classic acoustic blues, before he kicks off with his well-known power rock. Traditional blues lovers get their stuff with the classic ‘Stormy Monday’, ‘Cold Black Night’ is a devilish guitar track and fans of ‘Still Got The Blues’ get theirs in form of the Clapton-inspired ballad ‘Picture Of The Moon’ and the instrumental ‘The Prophet’. But the material is too weak, and as before in the case of Moore, he wins with raw and cold technique instead of the good and warm blues feeling.

Predictable
The guitar hero Moore is walking on walked paths.

Gary Moore is shifting from the hard rock past and the wish to repeat the success with ‘Still Got The Blues’ 11 years ago. After almost two experimental (to be him) albums, it’s back to the safe and solid ground of blues-rock. Heavy blues tunes of technique and sound, but sorry it’s with the lack of the soar nerve of the blues music. Predictable as possible: ‘Picture Of The Moon’ is a variation of ‘Still Got The Blues’, as was built upon ‘Parisienne Walkways’. Besides from the two blues-rock tracks ‘You Upset Me Baby’ and ‘How Many Lies’ the rest of it is pretty boring stuff, even for all guitar technique. Highlight: ‘You Upset Me Baby’

Same Old Blues
For Gary Moore it showed that it wasn’t a good idea to update his music to the new styles of 90’s with ‘A Different Beat’ in 1999. The album sunk like a rock, and now he is back as the title of the album tells, back to the blues. The opening track is surprisingly called ‘Enough Of The Blues’, and kicks really good and is promising for the rest to come. Gary Moore has taken the option to make this album with joy and pleasure, but it seems nearly unavoidable that he gets stuck in the same patterns when he tries another version of the old ‘Stormy Monday’. Those that aren’t too interested in the blues-rock will sit back with the feeling of that they have heard it before several times. The impression is strengthened with Moore’s own ‘Picture of The Moon’, which is an embarrassing try to copy himself to make another ‘Still Got The Blues’ for the big masses. Within the limitation ‘Back To The Blues’ is even though an honest album, but specially made for very good friends of Gary Moore.