Pete Feenstra chatted to Danny Bryant for his show on Get Ready to ROCK! Radio playing tracks from the new album. First broadcast 13 August 2023.
Jazzhaus [Release date: 29.09.23]
Danny Bryant’s Rise’ is his 13th album and finds the Brit bluesrocker straddling his favoured blues-rock genre with song driven forays into Americana and gospel.
It’s an album that digs deep for emotion both lyrically and musically. And while Danny brusque voice is well suited to some big arrangements, he finds something extra within himself to inject a number of ballads, heartfelt narratives and always the blues, with equal measures of emotional weight and musical inspiration.
The album cover finds him glancing sideways, hidden behind shades in hues of blues. It gives the impression he’s thinking that having come this far with his bluesrock template, this might be the moment to expand things.
In fact his previous albums have already illustrated his ability to look within himself for lyrical inspiration, no more so than ‘Invisible Me’ on ‘The Rage To Survive’ and ‘Isolate’ on Revelation.
And though this album is in part reflective, it’s more about recalibrating a restless musical spirit rather than settling into familiar pattern.
Producer Ian Dowling’s deft use of musical textures and sharp contrast between genres lies at the cornerstone of an album driven by an undeniable flow. He also frames Danny’s vocal husk and incisive solos with a frequent enveloping wall of sound.
The title track acts an over arching concept suggesting that after a quarter of a century of being a pro, Danny still has musical ambitions in terms of extending the breadth of his oeuvre.
The opening swaggering riff of ‘Rise’ is offset by electronic noodles, significant horns and Jamie Pipe’s mighty Hammond sweep.
The fact that Bryant tops and tails the album with equally powerful riffs, acts as a punctuation mark to a wide ranging musical journey, rather than a restatement of what has gone before.
The closing claustrophobic sounding ‘Drown (Jam)’ for example, acts as a cathartic release after all the self penned song craft, and the restraint to be found on Dylan’s ‘I Want You’.
Put simply “Rise” is an album with a broad musical sweep as befits the aspirational album title.
He explores a coruscating tone on the boogie feel and horn heavy ‘Animal In Me’ and adds a gritty tone and a tough vocal on the sledgehammer blues of ‘Hard Way To Go’.
It’s a song that could be early Walter Trout, while the perfunctory finish suggests that after an intense solo he has no real need to add anymore.
Ditto ‘Silver And Gold’ which finishes with a crisper toned solo and an even more ragged sudden ending
In between, there’s a couple of heavy duty ballads, most notably the poetic lyrics and imperious pull of ‘Louise’ which also provides the 2nd single on the album.
The piano line give the track extra heft, as Bryant leans into the track with a majestic trademark solo flanked by a wall of sound.
‘Scarlett Street’ has a similar Beatles influenced opening to be found on ‘Abbey Road’s ‘Because’. At the very least it occupies a similar introductory function on another imperious slow building number, but with noirish lyrics: “Down on Scarlett Street it’s night time every day, down on Scarlett Street, they take your soul away, down on Scarlett Street you know, they gonna make you pay.”
Danny delivers the hook with extended vowels and emotive phrasing.
The mix of sumptuous band interplay, subtle eerie bv’s and a defining solo makes this an outstanding track.
Such is its impact that you want more, leaving the void to be filled by an even more impressive groundbreaking track called ‘Into The Slipstream’.
Apart from anchoring the album as a whole, ‘Slipstream’ represents everything that Danny aims for on an album with a greater reach than anything he’s recorded before.
It’s an extension of the same message as ‘Rise’, but a combination of choral bv’s, percussive blocks, a rasping emotive vocal, pumping horns and a crunching solo racks up the tension to bursting point.
It’s also the best example on the album of his use of prosody, as the music evokes the imagery of being pulled into the slipstream, or in this case into the song’s chorus.
The sudden finish plunges the listener into silence, giving him the opportunity to explore restraint on the hymnal ballad ‘Julienne’.
Significantly his vocal is pushed up in the mix, as the snare snaps and a combination of organ line, delicate piano and more eerie bv’s give it the kind of sonorous feel that again evokes the lyrics.
At this point in the album you wonder how Danny has pulled off the sleight off hand of shifting the focus from blues-rock to the role of impassioned balladeer, not too far removed from either Elvis Costello, or even rock balladeer Axl Rose.
The answer is simple. He revels in the opportunities the layered production gives him. This is further evidenced by the way he tackles Dylan’s ‘I Want You’, as a Spartan acoustic intro with electronic edges gives full reign to a confident vocal performance.
The 12 track ‘Rise’ is a musical journey which parallels Danny’s recording career so far. He’s impressively built on his blues rock foundations to find a maturity that pushes him into new musical directions.
The result is a career best album that will satisfy existing fans as much as it will entice new listeners. ****
Review by Pete Feenstra
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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024
In this sequence we play ‘The Best of 2024′ GRTR! reviewer selections
Featured Albums w/c 9 December 2024
09:00-12:00 The Best of 2024 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2024 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2024 (Singer Songwriter)
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