After a number of great EP’s The New Savages are back with their take on The Delta Blues on their first full length release. ‘Seventh Son’ opens with a title track with a biblical context and a baritone croon like Jim Morrison hanging out in a Juke Joint somewhere deep in the South.
As vocalist Milan recounts: “Seventh Son is the true story of a man I know who found God while he was in prison serving 20 years for drunk driving and killing someone. There was something very powerful in the thought of finding ultimate truth and grace in the worst position in life. I wanted to capture his conversion experience in a song”.
This Melbourne two-piece definitely know their stuff and in sticking to their ‘truth‘ and the retelling of the era that produced the first recorded blues there’s an ‘other-wordly’ feel to this release, whether its the first time you hear the gently mournful ‘Nobody But You’ or the primitive yet evocative ‘Brother I Am Your Keeper’ a song out of time that sounds like it could have sprung from any decade of the last Century, were it not for that phrasing.
You get all the shades of that traditional Blues within these eight tracks: ‘Two White Horses Blues’ drawls and crawls whilst ‘Mississippi Black Water Blues’ swings and spills like an overfull cup. Best of all here though for me are the wonderful shuffle and layers of the atmospheric instrumental ‘Seagulls,’ a song I can listen to again and again and the lusty battle of good versus evil within ‘Devil Sent the Rain II’ that follows with a tale of flood and fear shot through with a fearful guitar and almost trance-like vocal. It’s the song for me that shows the power of this type of music.
The album closes with ‘Love’s in Vain’ a plaintive acoustic blues built around the mantra that has haunted Bluesmen through the ages. At eight tracks there’s even a whiff of authenticity about the running time here. Do yoursef a favour and get out and see these guys live. This is music you need to feel.
