Close As You Get (2007)
Gary's penultimate album - not planned as such I'm sure, but the next-to-last he recorded before his untimely and tragic death -
Close As You Get reunited him with his ex-Thin Lizzy colleague, drummer Brian Downey, and continued Gary's singular concentration on the blues which he loved so much, the album featuring five of the eleven tracks as covers of blues standards, not to mention a Chuck Berry number. The remaining songs are all written by Gary solo.
Classic Memphis-style blues opens the album, though “If the Devil Made Whisky” is actually a Moore original, showing how well he could write a blues tune. Had there not been credit for this, I would have thought it was one of those old blues numbers from the fifties or sixties. Great distorted guitar with a solid drumbeat that denotes Downey back where he belongs, and the two friends really seem to gell, even after all this time. It's one to get the feet tapping and the air-guitar cranked up for sure, then “Trouble at Home” is a slow blues burner, with soulful organ from Vic Martin lending a real mournful air to the song, and it's a real crash-comedown from the energetic happy blues of the opener, certainly shifting the focus and keeping you off-balance.
A sad and moody song about the breakup of a marriage, it gives way to the old Chuck Berry “Thirty Days”, which rocks along nicely with wild abandon and an almost country beat, then “Hard Times” struts along with some really cool harmonica courtesy of Mark Feltham, who has also played for that other exponent of the blues, the late Rory Gallagher. Great guitar breaks from Gary make this song just masses of fun, the real blues idea of turning something bad into something good, almost glorying in your misfortune.
It's not hard to see why this, and previous albums post-1997 did nothing in the charts, and why Gary had no more hit singles after
Wild Frontier. This is not music made by someone interested in, or worried about, pleasing the common denominator, getting hit singles and radio airplay. These are albums crafted by an artist who truly loved and respected and revered the blues, and who knew how to properly pay homage to the greats who had gone before him - as no doubt future generations will pay their dues to Gary Moore - and his cover of John Mayall's wistful “Have You Heard” is a case in point. You can just feel Gary's love for the blues in this track, can hear him revelling in the music he grew up on, cut his teeth playing, inspired him to pick up a guitar at an early age, and no doubt kept him company right up to the end. Again, Vic Martin's expressive keyboards help bring this song further to life, though it is as ever Gary's dexterity and fluidity on the guitar that makes it.
The guy just played the guitar, like all the greats, as if it was not quite so much an instrument he used to make music, but more as if it was an extension of his body, part of him, something he could almost make play just by thinking about it. Or not thinking about it. It was music that came from deep within, from the heart and the soul, not necessarily from the fingers. Musicians like Gary Moore are not made, no matter what the Simon Cowells of this world may believe: they are born, and sadly, all too seldom, but in a way that's all right. When a star like Gary Moore comes along he lights up the sky and blazes brightly, then is gone all too soon but leaves a trail across the sky that never fades, and we can see from any point on the planet.
One of two songs by Sonny Boy Williamson II, “Eyesight to the Blind” is a swaggering, striding boogie rocker with funky organ and screeching guitar, then things slow down again and get all laidback for Royce Swain's “Evenin'” with again perfect keyboard backing from Martin and minimal percussion from Downey. A plaintive little guitar solo from Gary just puts the icing on this particularly tasty cake, then there's another Moore original in “Nowhere fast”, itself a lovely little blues ballad, following which things ramp right up again for the second Sonny Boy track, this being “Checkin' Up On My Baby”.
With again great little harmonica solos from Mark Feltham, it proves to be the last uptempo number on the album, the last two being one written by Gary, “I Had a Dream”, a beautiful, emotional ballad with blues overtones, tiny touches of percussion all that's needed from Brian Downey to punctuate the song, Martin's keyboard again keeping an undercurrent for Gary against which he lays down some seriously beautiful guitar, including a stunner that takes the song to its conclusion, leaving us with one more cover to close the album, and it's Eddie James “Son” House Jr's “Sundown”. Seriously acoustic, the whole song is I think played on the dobro, and it's a powerful and yet in its way low-key ending to a damn fine album.
TRACK LISTING
1. If the Devil Made Whisky
2. Trouble at Home
3. Thirty Days
4. Hard Times
5. Have you heard
6. Eyesight to the Blind
7. Evenin'
8. Nowhere Fast
9. Checkin' Up On My Baby
10. I Had a Dream
11. Sundown
Rating: 9.0/10