This year, BMG have decided to reissue four Gary Moore LPs on CD and vinyl: the studio albums Old New Ballads Blues (2006), Close As You Get (2007), and Bad For You Baby (2008), along with the live album, Live at Bush Hall 2007 (2014). Available on both CD and vinyl, these reissues capture Gary on fiery form and they provide a welcome opportunity for fans who missed out the first time around to pick them up at a sensible price.
Released in 2007, Close As You Get reunited Moore with his former Thin Lizzy bandmate, drummer Brian Downey, who performs on every track. The result is a stripped-down album, packed full of blistering lead work, and delivered with brio by Moore and his band. This review is for the CD edition, which comes housed in a mini-gatefold sleeve with 12-page booklet continuing partial lyrics, images and credits (but sadly no new liner notes), and a hype sticker on the front. As with the other reissues, there are no bonus tracks.
The album starts out as it means to go on, with the low-down, grungy blues of If The Devil Made Whiskey. Based around a sludgy riff that owes as much to Mudhoney as Muddy Waters, it’s a hard blues that Gary was exploring in 2007 and it is as captivating now as it was when it first dropped. Recorded at Sarm Hookend with long-standing producer Ian Taylor at the helm, it’s a raw-as-hell-opening and, if that appears to stand in contrast to the gorgeous slow blues of Trouble At Home, it’s only to the point that Gary unleashes a solo of such intensity, it blazes from the speakers.
The first of a number of covers featured on the album, Thirty Days finds Gary and his band having a rocking good time, smashing the hell out of a Chuck Berry number, and their excitement proves infectious. Having got the toes tapping, Gary is in no mood to let the pace slide and so he ploughs headlong into the mid-tempo Delta stomp of Hard Times, which comes complete with slide licks, dry-as-a-bone harmonica, and yet more intense lead work. It’s an album highlight captured with such raw authenticity, it feels like you’re in the studio with the band.
With the album reaching its halfway mark, Gary turns the lights down low for a lovely rendition of John Mayall’s Have You Heard. A nod to the Beano album, a record Gary considered to be a foundational text for the blues, it’s a superb rendering, Vic Martin’s swirling organ providing the perfect backdrop for Gary’s astonishing lead work.
Another cover follows in the form of Sonny Boy Williamson II’s Eyesight To The Blind, delivered here with funky gusto by a band clearly having the time of their lives. This is just a brief digression into rock ‘n’ roll territory, however, and it’s followed by another slow number – a lengthy, moody take on Royce Swain’s Evenin’, which drifts dreamily through the speakers.
Remaining in a calmer mode, Gary and his band offer up a fantastic original piece, Nowehere Fast, which has a Tom Petty vibe to it, before smashing the mood to smithereens with the high-octane blast of Checkin’ Up On My Baby (another Sonny Boy cut), which is delivered here with stinging force. Simple and direct, it finds Brian nailing the beat down hard as Gary tears into his guitar with gusto. It screams, it roars, it wails, and it leaves the listener breathless at its raw force.
Perhaps inevitably after such an outpouring, Gary slows the pace way down for the lilting ballad, I Had A Dream. An original cut that has more than a touch of Unchained Melody to it, it’s a heart felt piece that needs no further embellishment. As such, it finds Gary dismissing his band to wrap up the record with an acoustic ditty titled Sundown. Listen closely and you’ll hear Gary talking to the control room at the start before providing the album with a lovely coda. You can picture him, sat alone with his guitar as the band pack down around him.
A varied, consistently brilliant album, Close As You Get is very much driven by the sympathetic relationship between Gary and Brian, with each instinctively knowing what the other needs. The result is a raw, bluesy album that is, as the title implies, as close as you can get to seeing the band live without actually being there. Beautifully produced and packed with thrilling moments, this is an essential addition to the collection of any serious blues’ fan. 9/10
