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Music for Sport (Release Date 25.03.22)
The Spiderhawks are the brainchild of Simon Webb who has a CV as long as your arm as a composer for TV, theatre and film. They released a charity single during lockdown but this is the first full length album, and he has used his contacts to enlist some impressive collaborators with Manfred Mann’s Earth Band and Jones Gang singer Robert Hart on all tracks and Bernie Marsden adding guitar on several of them.
However this is far from the full on blues rock album you might expect from those gentlemen and instead a broader musical canvas is drawn. Opener ‘You Can Count On Me’ is eighties pop-soul in the mould of Go West or Level 42 with brassy sounding keyboards and a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Landslide’ (the only song not written by Simon) is delivered in an, er, ‘interesting’ cod-reggae style.
‘Save Me’ is an example of where Bernie’s contribution is limited to some subtle guitar fills rather than long solos, while Robert’s gravel voice is prominent on ‘Lately’, though on other songs it doesn’t sound particularly like him.
‘She’s Waiting’ is easily the best song, starting gently but building in dramatic fashion with Robert’s passionate vocals, and reminded me of John Miles and other orchestrated seventies sounds.
Some of the songs, for example the Springsteen esque ‘Lullabye’ are deceptively low-key and simple, yet the arrangements are thoughtful as you would expect from someone of Simon Webb’s background and decently produced with each instrument clearly audible.
‘Take Me Back’ adds sax and clarinet into the mix while ‘Foundation’ mixes some world music influences, not unlike Robert’s day job in the Earth Band, with Bernie’s longest solo by some distance.
It’s far from an essential purchase, except for diehard collectors of some of the big names featured, but an enjoyable listen and the songs have a beguiling charm to them. *** 1/2
Review by Andy Nathan
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14:00-16:00 KATARINA PEJAK – Pearls On A String (Ruf Records)
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