Philip Sayce – Ruby Electric

site | label | buy

Welsh-Canadian blues guitarist and singer Philip Sayce is rightly capitlising on the fickleness of the blues audiences who swing from hot young new thing to hot young new thing in a disturbingly similar way to pop fans with this stop-gap half-studio-half-live release. Sayce is one of the latest “discoveries” by the Bonamassa-crowd along with the likes of Oli Brown and is suddenly finding himself at mid-level venues quicker than was initially realistic after this first album Peace Machine. This is now Sayce’s third commercial release after last year’s Innerevolution and he still struggles to find his own identity. Due in no small part to the (unfortunate?) similarities in the voice, Sayce simply doesn’t seem to be able to shake the Lenny Kravitz sound. Sometimes this is forgotten when the songs are good enough, like the heavy-grooving title track, or when he’s breaking out his proper blues credentials in some of his solos, but sappy stuff like lead single Daydream Tonight and straight-forward funk rock like opening brace Let The Love In (with occassional guest vocals from Melissa Etheridge) and Set Us Free, all-too-polished in their delivery, leave the ever-boring “haven’t I heard this somewhere before?” taste in the mouth. After the six new tracks come eight songs recorded in Holland, France and Germany on Sayce’s 2010 European tour. Here he can really show his more genuine blues side, something often missing from his studio work in the same way as Eric Sardinas often lacks sincerity and the electrifying raw edge of his live performances on record. Live Sayce is no Sardinas, but when he’s playing the kind of lengthy solo he produces in Slipaway, or the reverb’d SRV tones of Alchemy he capably demonstrates he’s got real blues feeling in there, and a reluctance to allow that to show through in his studio music, which still seems to focus more on producing catchy sing-a-longs than it does real emotion.

Written by Andy Lye
More: 2011, Albums, Blues, Quick.Play Reviews, Philip Sayce