LAURENCE JONES – Thunder In The Sky

Shane | 23 April 2013 | Reply

Promise Records UK
Released June 2012
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
8.5/10

There aren’t too many 20 year old Brits who can wield an axe with such proficiency as Laurence Jones, let alone sing to blues with the feeling he can muster. Whilst most of his school chums are chasing skirt and watching the clock tick towards closing time at their local, Jones is penning and playing sincere blues with a touch of Hendrix and BB King over a bedrock of Jimmy Vaughan’s Texan schwang.

His style is commanding – relaxed but forthright. His guitar shuffles one minute, riffs the next, and then rings out clear, precise, solos full of emotion that belie his youth. Jones also has a singing voice which mirrors his playing: unhurried but fully in control, sometimes half talking/half singing, always emotive and steering the ship to shore.

The rollicking Bad Girl opens the album, laying down the template for the 9 tracks to follow, whilst the wry Why Do You Love Me and the only cover present, a fine reinterpretation of BB King’s The Thrill Is Gone hint that what he lacks in age he has already spent time making up for in life experience.

Closing one’s debut album with two blues – a searing ballad and a stomping rocker – both over six and a half minutes long may be suicide in most hands, but Jones pulls it off with aplomb, leaving the listener wanting more.

And more is exactly what we will be hearing from Laurence Jones – if his debut album is this good, God only knows what he might be capable of in ten or twenty years!

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