Two years on from Walk In Shadow, CERI JUSTICE returns with the self-released Cut Loose, eleven tracks that, written by Justice and Paul Johnson (who plays guitar, mandolin, bass, keys and drums), and musically variously aided and abetted by guitarist Tony Kelsey, steel player DB Smith and Marion Fleetwood on strings, ably showcase her voice and stylistic range, from swaggering rock to blues and country. It kicks off in twangy style with the swaggering country inflected, chorus catchy Show Me What You’re Made Of, slowing down for the steel-stained and steady drum patterned Americana-balladry Looking For A Lover, another with dramatic big chords.
Still with country roots, Got This Feeling has a poppier feel to its tumbling chords, Fleetwood’s violin bringing mournful notes to the folksier sound of the spare, hypnotic swayer Fragments (Jeannie’s Escape) before Just A Fever taps into her bluesier rock groove with both Kelsey’s growling electric lead guitar and angsty acoustic, heavy drums, wailing fiddle and a steady steamrollering ebb and flow rhythm.
Switching the mood, Miss U Mantra is founded on fingerpicked guitar before the electrics and heavy drums roll in and even a 60s psychedelic blues touch. Offering her quieter side, Love’s Let Me Down is an acoustic guitar, steel-stroked slow swayer that gradually builds into a soaring crescendo.
Opening with fingerpicked acoustic, bluesy country and a trace of Texas heat are the threads bringing the organ underpinned Sometimes I Wonder together before the title track brings her back to urgent blues and metal rock that melds Quatro, Raitt, Elles Bailey and Joanne Shaw-Taylor. There more big noise blues riffs and chords for the penultimate, handclapping power-burning All In My Dreams the album ending with the near six-minute The 21st Day, a cinematic opening sweep giving way to resonant single picked guitar note and a feverish desert blues mood to the slow, steady snaking voodoo queen rhythm before it fades away into the trembling distance. There is, though, a bonus track, an inspired slow and acoustic cover the Eddie & The Hot Rods classic Do Anything You Wanna Do. As indeed she can. Exuding a fierce confidence to match the heat in the music, to quote the Kenny Loggins classic the title evokes, it’s time for her to tear up this town and beyond.
When not playing his trade as an acoustic contemporary folk singer-songwriter, John Napier has a parallel musical identity as frontman for Big Special-like (with Kneecap hood) punk-rap outfit THE LINE MANAGERS alongside bassist Andy Kearney and drummer Olly Forrester, new single The Black Post a rant against the stagnation of post-millennial culture set to a relentless punk, garage rock groove while If' is a spoken word call-to-arms set to angular punk funk. (www.thelinemanagers.bandcamp.
