It won’t be released till October 24th, but I have had the new Tomas Doncker Band, written by Doncker and poet Yusef Komunyakaa, album Big Apple Blues, on heavy rotation for the past two days and it is about as good as it could possibly be.
I have no idea what the world is gonna say once they hear this brilliant blues follow up to Moanin’ After Midnight, the Howling Wolf project that finally began to cop the world to what I already knew: Doncker is one of the best guitarist around.
On Big Apple Blues you will hear the half of the equation, one of the best songwriters.
And on both albums, his singing is a deep rumble of power and glory.
If you were at the True Groove All Stars Blue Note gig this summer, you already know “Can’t Say No” and on the album it is surrounded by the title track on one side and “The New Day” on the other and between the three it is one of the great album openings, it reminds me of the first side of My Aim Is True, you can’t believe your ears.
And I am not going to review it here or now, there is too much time to go, indeed, Funky World has just been released and it is where the attention should be, and Funky, which is available on Spotify (the link is below) is pretty damn awesome itself; “Kong” is already one of my favorite songs in the world.
But Funky is diffused and Big Apple Blues is a concentrated source of huge power and beauty. I don’t know what I am gonna say about it, I don’t know what I can. I am like Rolling Stone and U2, every time I don’t think they can’t do better than a song, they do better than this and I regret the superlatives I used earlier.
Sinners? Come home to the Big Apple Blues.
