Review: Davy Knowles – The Invisible Man
Davy Knowles – The Invisible Man
Format: CD – Vinyl LP – Digital / Label: Independent
Release: 2024
Text: Tom Wouters
Davy Knowles is a British songwriter-singer-guitarist, who was born and bred at The Isle of Man. At eleven, after hearing Dire Strait’s Sultans Of Swing on the radio he decided to play the guitar. In 2003 Knowles started the band Back Door Slam with some mates from Man. The band was quite successful around Britain, until in 2009 Back Door Slam disbanded and Knowles decided to give it a go as a solo artist. The guitarist cited Rory Gallagher, Mark Knopfler, Peter Green and Cream as his biggest inspirations. Since 2014, Knowles has released four solo albums (2014’s ‘The Outsider,’ 2016’s ‘Three Miles From Avalon,’ 2021’s ‘What Happens Next,’ and the 2023 acoustic folk album ‘If I Should Wander’).
And now, in 2024, there’s ‘The Invisible Man,’ an album on which Knowles shows that he has grown enormously as a songwriter. All thirteen songs are written by Knowles and are performed by Knowles and his excellent rhythm section (Tod Bowers on bass and Mike Hansen on drums) as classic rock songs.
In the opening track, the mediocre shuffle Good To Know Ya, we are briefly misled, but from track two onwards one classic rock track follows the other. Tell Me What You Want Me To Be, heavily reliant on Knowles’ wah-wah guitar surprisingly evokes memories of an act Knowles didn’t name as an influence, namely Humble Pie, not least because of the Steve Marriott-esque vocals.
The track is followed by one of the album’s highlights, the title track The Invisible Man, which, due to the vocal line and guitar playing, is immediately reminiscent of Free and Paul Kossoff’s screaming guitar. Around Here is where the influences of Rory Gallagher and Celtic music is clearly audible, which is even more expressed in Running Out Of Moonlight. It is not without reason that Knowles played in the Gallagher tribute band Band Of Friends in 2017 and 2018 with ex-Rory Gallagher bandmates Gerry McAvoy and Ted McKenna.
The next highlight is Welcome To The Real World, a beautifully sung US Classic Rock song à la Journey, leaning on beautiful slide guitar playing. But Knowles quickly returns to British classic rock in the phenomenal Free/Humble Pie-like No More To Weep, to finish closing with the beautiful semi-acoustic Wonder You Are with a beautiful dobro solo. It is this song that underlines Knowles’ abilities as a songwriter of the extra class.
‘The Invisible Man’ is a great classic rock album, which not only showcases the class of guitarist/vocalist Davy Knowles, but confirms Knowles as a composer of catchy British Classic Rock songs.
Tracks:
01. Good To Know Ya
02. Tell Me What You Want Me To Be
03. The Invisible Man
04. Around Here
05. All My Life
06. Running Out Of Moonlight
07. Welcome To The Real World
08. You Love The Rain
09. One Wrong Move
10. No More To Weep
11. Wonder You Are
Website: https://davyknowles.com/