Sari Schorr

Of the many ladies of the Blues around at the moment Sari Schorr stands head and shoulders above the mean.
I don’t think that there is any one who has the range of vocal talents and styles that she show and her last album ‘A Force Of Nature’ saw her raise her profile both here, across Europe and in the US to ‘star’ levels.

This new album though has hardly been off my player since I first received it – this is a talent of awesome proportions.

Sari broke up the band that made ‘A Force…’ a great album and now has Ash Wilson on guitar, Bob Fridzema on keys, Mat Beable on bass and Roy Martin on drums and the result is more explosive, more varied in style and Henning Gerke’s production has focused closely on her voice – the dynamics are intense.

All the tracks here, bar two, were written by Schorr and Gerke and as the lady herself says "Songwriting is like running through the sand in stilettos. You really can’t get anywhere until you bare your soul."
The two covers are Mick Ralphs’ ‘Ready For Love’ and Ian McLagan’s ‘Never Say Never’ but she delivers both in a totally different way to the originals – so much so that you could hardly call them covers.

The variety in the album is remarkable, from the belting and massive opener ‘King Of Rock And Roll’ – written in memory of Robert Johnson – to ‘Beautiful’, a sad and wistful ballad that gets to the heart of our obsession with perfection and the ignoring of the beauty of anyone who doesn’t match the mould.

The band show they can really rock it out on ‘The New Revolution’, written for Martin Luther King Jr but the pithiest number here is probably ‘Freedom’ which sounds like a classic rocker until you realise it is actually a diatribe against modern day gun laws and the putting of semi-automatic weapons in the hands of anyone with the cash.

The title track was Ian McLagan’s song to his wife’s memory after her sudden death. Schorr creates a wonderfully bitterweet moment to close the album.

In many respects, Sari has many of the best attributes of Tina Turner and Janis Joplin but she has a very modern voice and this album really shows her at her very best.