Review: Janiva Magness – Back For Me
Janiva Magness – Back For Me
Format: CD – Vinyl LP – Digital / Label: Blue Élan Records
Release: 2025
Text: Bert van Kessel
I fell in love with Janiva Magness when I saw (and heard!) her tear the tent down at Peer 1998. A couple of years have passed since then in which she has come up with some memorable, highly personal albums, most notably ‘Hard To Kill’ from 2022.
This new one, her seventeenth, produced by her longtime friend Dave Darling, although not autobographical is another highlight in the career of this powerhouse at the crossroads of blues and soul.
She picked ten gems from various sources and amply displays her extraordinary capacity to make these borrowed songs her own; in the Texas blues stomp of opener Masterpiece (written by Darling) she pours her heart out, singing “ I made a lot of mistakes, but you might be my masterpiece.” Joe Bonamassa adds some inspired scorching fretwork.
On the title track she takes her vocals to great emotional heights: ” I’ll be right here when you come back for me”. Bill Withers wrote The Same Love That Made Me Laugh. It is a funky number with a gospel feel.
Sue Foley helps out on guitar on the pop-infused Holes which is catchy with an infectious riff. There’s a heartfelt bitterness in Ray Lamontagne’s sensual You Can Bring Me Flowers, about a painful betrayal. She delivers Tracy Nelson’s powerful slow blues Down So Low with more than convincing vocals, its rawness even evoking images of Janis Joplin.
After a visit to Memphis with Ann Peebles’ Do I Need You,the closing track ‘, Allen Toussaint’s Hittin on Nothin’, takes us to New Orleans with Jesse Dayton’s guitar licks drenched in gumbo.
With this impressive, honest album full of heartache Janiva Magness may well add another award to her already stacked mantelpiece.
Tracks:
01. Masterpiece (feat. Joe Bonamassa)
02. Back For Me
03. The Same Love That Made Me Laugh
04. November
05. Holes (feat. Sue Foley)
06. I Was Good To You Baby
07. You Can Bring Me Flowers
08. Down So Low
09. Do I Need You
10. Hittin’ On Nothin’ (feat. Jesse Dayton)
Website: https://www.janivamagness.com/