PHIL MANCA: Dancing Spirits (ROCK,Blues): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Phil Manca crosses the years, guitar in hand. In a career spanning 40 years, he has had the time to touch many different styles, most often in the shadows. He owes his glory hours to film music, notably those of Jean-Marie Poiré (for "Les Visiteurs", among others), to the musical project Era and its millions of albums sold. But Phil Manca is above all a child of the rock of the 60s and 70s, who made his debut with TNT and then with Sortilège. His second solo album, "Dancing Spirits", is a tribute to his first and eternal loves, a concentrate of heavy blues that refers to the pioneers of hard rock, from the Yardbirds to Led Zeppelin.

It is with a wink to 'Kashmir' that Phil Manca introduces the track 'Dancing Spirits' on which he demonstrates his science of the inspired, efficient and unadorned solo. No doubt, when it is a question of putting his Gibson Les Paul at the service of a peachy and fat blues rock, the Parisian has no lesson to receive. All the more so as he can rely on a particularly inspired singer, Josselin Jobard, who allows him to breathe into his compositions the ardour and the dynamism essential to the genre, as on the very good 'Got To No' inspired by the best AC/DC (Bon Scott period).

But even if Led Zeppelin remains an essential reference for Phil Manca ('Sea Of Stone', 'Mask Of Snow'), the guitarist is also a disciple of Gary Moore, to whom he paid homage on stage during two years with his Gary Moore Tribute. And the spirit of the great Gary haunts most of Phil's solos, even on the beautiful blues ballad 'Betty Blue', a Betty that one could almost imagine walking the Parisian sidewalks one summer evening in 1949.

With "Dancing Spirits", Phil Manca offers us an album of great coherence even in the choice of his covers ('All Around The World' by Titus Turner, 'Someone Cares For Me' and 'Motorhead Baby' by Johnny Guitar Watson). An album of heavy blues with a strong character that has no other ambition than to made us smile, which, in these times, is a real gift. - Official website

PHIL MANCA

DANCING SPIRITS

AUTRE LABEL

ROCK