Matt Pearce & The Mutiny

Matt Pearce has been around a fair while, previously as a member of Voodoo Six and is well known as a hard rocker with a Bluesey edge.
He fell out of love with hard rock a little while back and started to get more into groove based Blues and these days he cites people such as Stevie Ray Vaughan, Aretha, B.B. King & Prince as his real influences.

So, first thing, this doesn’t sound like a tribute to those superstars or to any kind of ‘homage’.
This is heavily groove laden Blues with a deeply funky core and works pretty dam well on all levels.
I found myself completely entranced by the rhythms and the playing, especially the keyboards and guitar and Pearce’s vocals are no slouch either. In short, it is as good a piece of funky Blues as any I’ve heard this year and probably for a few years at that.

Right from the kick-off Pearce has you getting a groove thing on with ‘Scarecrowing’. One of those numbers that you cannot sit still to, it’s got an infections riff and the rhythm is all over the house. The last time I heard clavichord played with such funk was by Stevie Wonder and the whole band cook up a soul stew that is alive with spice and hot oils.

You can hear Pearce’ roots in rock in a track such as ‘Like A Hammer’ which is still dense and groove laden but there is a rock riff at its heart that is just beyond solid.

‘Set Me Free’ has a wonderful guitar solo at its outset, the track is slower and even more intense that what has gone before but it still has an infectious rhythm – carried by Jon Moody’s keys – that you simply can’t ignore.

I happily played the album through time after time, getting into the layers of the band and the miasma of groove they produce, just enjoying the music and letting it into my heart.

This is something special, even to an old bugger who has heard it all before.