Rather like there are those who believe that punk is exclusively about learning three chords and overdosing on attitude, there are those, sadly, who believe that the blues is all about twelve bar progressions and lamenting the loss of a loved one. For anyone who has spent any time at all listening to the wonderful, open-ended genre that is the blues, a genre that embraces everything from jazz to rock and which largely inspired the majority of modern rock and metal music, such a belief is demonstrably false and bands like Zarbo, a two-piece from Brighton, take great delight in demonstrating the breadth of the genre whilst placing their own unique interpretation upon it.
About Zarbo the band very little is known. The biography is short and to the point, but then a lack of information about the band just leaves all the more tie to focus on their extraordinary debut, a twelve track, joyous collision of styles, loosely grouped under the blues umbrella and played with a gusto that is both refreshing and invigorating. Quite simply the band’s self-titled first work is a record that will leave you with a grin as wide as Zarbo’s and a head full of incessant melodies that refuse to dissipate.
Opening with ‘man monkey’, the warm crackle of vinyl overlays a distant banjo before the production suddenly snaps into the here and now with banjo, electric guitar and eccentric percussion all in place. Andy Heath has the perfect voice, pitched somewhere between Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan, and the recording perfectly captures the band’s live sound, with everything rendered with an enviable clarity. Recalling the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah band, ‘don’t end up working in a supermarket’ is a darkly humorous, cautionary number that pins a crack-addictive chorus to a lazy shuffle that is held together by Paul Bridge’s emotive banjo work. Changing style, ‘One too many yesterdays’ heads into the dark territory that Dylan seems to have been inhabiting since the wonderful ‘love and theft’, with some delightful slide work sweetening an otherwise brooding number. Far simpler is the acoustic blues of ‘Tuesday Night’, which moves from a verse which perfectly captures the sound of a wet evening at an open mic night to a chorus that is as bright as a starburst and possessed of a joyous 50s music hall feel that taps into the same vein as the Manic Street Preachers’ recent single ‘show me the wonder’.
Demonstrating their sense of humour, Zarbo’s next song is the croonerish ‘moany moany’ that is somewhere between the Bonzo dog doo-dah band and Nick Cave only for ‘soul vampires’ to plunge you into the cold waters of Tom Waits’ nightmarish world. It’s a beautiful, pained song that places intelligent lyrics at the heart of a stripped-down and simple song that lingers long in the memory. ‘Precious thing’, in contrast, is a simple ditty that lightens the atmosphere in preparation for the delightfully off-base ‘whole lot better’ with its unconventional musical backdrop and its lyrical genius (“you’re a mental midget and we love you for it”).Another track that taps into that hitherto unique vein of atmospheric sadness that Bob Dylan so readily conjures, ‘walking back to happiness’ is a song that can only, and simply, be described as beautiful, the gentle, subtle instrumentation bringing a tear to the eye as the song voices regrets you didn’t even know you had.
Having unburdened the hearts deepest secrets, the album lightens the mood considerably with ‘talking to da man’, a kazoo-toting, swaggering number rooted in 50s America that is matched in its good-humoured bonhomie by the slinky ‘slaughterhouse rag’, a song that brings to mind the crazed bluegrass of Mad Dog Mccree at their most energetic. The album’s closer is the soulful ‘healed by the hands of Elvis’ which brings to mind the gentle Americana of Clapton’s recent ‘old sock’ set and it contains some stunning guitar work as well as the sort of chorus you can imagine a crowd singing along to with love and warmth in their hearts.
Zarbo are one of those bands who have the uncanny knack of being able to take a number of influences and work them up into something that belongs to them. This not an album attempting to tread new pastures, rather it revels in the traditional forms of the blues and the band’s trick is to reference the very best over the twelve songs on offer. Clever enough to mix moods and styles, there are songs here of breath-taking beauty, always off-set by more whimsical numbers. Indeed, Zarbo treat the album like a live set, carefully balancing sounds and styles so that you never get the same thing twice in row, and the result is an album that flows beautifully from start to finish, roving through light hearted bluegrass and dusty delta blues without missing a beat. The musicianship on offer is of the highest calibre and there is always the sense that if you were to see the band in the live environment, what you hear is what you’d get. Highly recommended for fans of Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Eric Clapton et al, more importantly this is an album to play to anyone who maintains that all blues sounds the same. A genuine pleasure from start to finish, Zarbo’s debut is a triumph which we can only hope they’ll repeat in the near future and which, in the meantime, is a wonderful, joyful album to savour time and again.
