Album review: THE KEV WALKER BAND – Biding My Time

The Kev Walker Band - Biding My Time

[Release date 09.09.13]

A carpenter by trade, it’s been 30 years since Essex singer songwriter Kev Walker released his last album (The Dusk, 1983). Sadly, it was the loss of his wife to cancer that inspired Biding My Time – an album put together to raise funds for Cancer Research UK and MacMillan Cancer Support.

In his time, Kev’s worked with Vince Clarke of Depeche Mode, Yazoo and Erasure, and also shared the same bill as Denise Williams, Phil Bailey and Sir Cliff. He cites his musical influences as the likes of Joni Mitchell, Santana and Led Zeppelin.

Clearly delivered on a restricted budget, Biding My Time opens in some style with ‘Take Me For Granted’ – a marvellous number that marries Steely Dan ‘cool’ with splendid Isley Bros style guitar work and some cracking female backing vocals. Unfortunately it’s a brief Biding My Time doesn’t stick consistently to with roughly half the songs being keyboard based Nilsson style ballads.

But when Biding My Time rocks out, it’s a goodtime ride – ‘Something Going On Here’ revisits the Becker / Fagan jazz infused soulful sound, ‘Cold As Winter’ echoes Eagles circa Hotel California, while ‘In The Dusk’ even manages to subtly borrow on the Sensational Alex Harvey band’s Faith Healer riff.

No question Biding My Time should appeal to a wide range of baby boomers and hopefully raises a decent amount of cash for charity. From an artistic perspective, if he’d only focused solely on the rock end of the spectrum and thrown a little money at the production, Kev Walker could well have had to consider giving up the day job. Nice one. ***

Review by Pete Whalley

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