LEE O'NELL BLUES GANG: This Is Us (BLUES): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Lee O'Nell Blues Gang is a story of love as well as friendship. A love story between guitarist Lionel Wernert and female singer Gipsy Bacuet, who form a duo on stage and a couple in the city, and a friendship story with Fred Chapellier, Lionel Wernert's childhood friend, the one with whom he shaped his rock and blues culture. It's not surprising in these conditions that the first one comes to help the second one when he decides to form a group of rock blues, and takes advantage of it to intervene several times on this second album of the group, "This Is Us". What is more surprising is the strange similarity with which the two guitarists approach their instrument, between catchy riffs and very classy soli, with a subtle and pure blues feeling.

However, "This Is Us" is a much more eclectic album than it could let it suppose. First of all, because Lee O'Nell Blues Gang likes to combine blues with all tempos, from slow blues ('When You Were A Child') to rock and roll ('Kiss Me Again', 'Remember', 'On The Road'), passing of course by blues rock ('Be A Man') and even boogie ('Boogie Woogie Broke Down Love'), then because Gipsy Bacuet brings to the music of the group his jazz universe and proves once again that, in this ultra-referenced style, a guitarist, as good as he is, is nothing without a real beautiful voice.

Indeed, it is indeed the singer and her very soulful voice that gives Lee O'Nell Blues Gang its coherence and its so particular identity, beyond the diversity of the approached styles. The sensuality she gives to the irresistible 'Let The Good Times Roll' and to the magnificent piano-vocal track 'Just Need A Prayer' is for a lot in the warm atmosphere that emerges from the listening of "This Is Us".

Surprising by its assumed eclecticism, exciting by its musical quality, by the brilliant guitar soli of Lionel Wernert (the very melodic 'Kiss Me Again', the floydian 'Remember') and by the sensual soul voice of Gipsy Bacuet, "This Is Us" is a beautiful album which, by leaning on a blues background, manages to make two often irreconcilable universes coexist: the jazz and the rock. The respect and humility with which the guitarist and the singer approach these two very different styles says a lot about the mutual respect that binds them both. As a matter of fact, love stories can also give birth to beautiful albums. - Official website

LEE O'NELL BLUES GANG

THIS IS US

AUTOPRODUCTION

BLUES