Review: Bex Marshall – Fortuna
Bex Marshall – Fortuna
Format: CD – Digital / Label: DixieFrog Records
Release: 2024
Text: Pascal Wilhelm
I think I am in love. Among the many great female blues singers and guitar players (for example Sue Foley, Carolyn Wonderland, Ana Popovic, Debbie Davis, Samantha Fish and the GREAT Laura Chavez, although she doesn’t sing) we have UK-based Bex Marshall. She has been around for some time, travelling the world as a croupier on cruise liners and hitch hiking through Australia (she loves to travel).
She grew up listening to Tina Turner and absorbing Eric Clapton’s guitar style infused by John Lee Hooker’s back porch flavour and Freddie King’s sting. Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s influenced her song writing.
Ten songs on this album, one cover (Dirty Water by Buddy and Julie Miller), this is her latest release since ‘The House of Mercy’ (2012). Bex has a unique guitar playing style and a very powerful voice. She can convincingly carry a three-piece blues rock outfit. Of course, woman can do that! Sue Foley is doing it for years. But that voice! Bex is the complete package; powerful, soulful, sexy.
The songs have a unique character. When she uses the resonator guitar the songs become ultimately bluesy, her voice and guitar playing weave around each other beautifully, authentically, and maturely.
Storytelling is vivid, “Table for one” on this album being a good example: “I want a table for one. [ .. ] I wanna table for one don’t go breaking your neck. Trying to inspect me. Just cause I’m sitting alone.”
Bex Marshall is here to stay, delivering “high energy blues rock euphoria to reignite people’s mojos.” That is what she stands for and I love it. Will you sit at my table, Bex?
Tracks:
01. Preaching to the Choir
02. Dirty Water
03. I Can’t Look You In The Eye
04. 5am
05.Jungle
06.Table for One
07.Fortuna
08.Lay Down and Die
09. Scrapyard Dog
10. When Its Gone
Website: https://www.bexmarshall.com/