Review: SirJo Cocchi & Balta Bordoy – Heads Up!
SirJo Cocchi & Balta Bordoy – Heads Up!
Format: CD – Vinyl LP – Digital / Label: Continental Record Services
Release: 2024
Text: Tom Wouters
Two blues masters from Southern Europe perform at Heads Up! joined hands. The Italian vocalist and pianist SirJo Cocchi and the Spanish guitarist Balta Bordoy are, according to Heads Up! , two excellent blues purists and have made a very competent 60’s blues album. SirJo Cocchi is an excellent blues vocalist and pianist and Balta Bordoy is an excellent blues guitarist.
In the opening track Love And Pain Blues, the band (alongside Cocchi and Bordoy, Santi Ursul on bass and Micky Izquierdo on drums) sounds as if the music has been recorded on a 4-track recorder. In Transmutation Blues, guest musician Victor Puertas excels on harmonica and Heads Up is an instrumental in which Cocchi on piano and Bordoy on guitar show off their art.
Good Smelling Woman is also a faithful blues, including few uplifting lyrics. In Losing Hand we hear a beautifully played slow blues, in which the rhythm section although loses track in the up-tempo middle section. In Blues For The End Of The World you imagine yourself listening to Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac and in Tell Me the inevitable Bo Diddley riff is pulled out.
And that is something that the otherwise very competently played blues of Cocchi & Bordoy lacks: there is little of their own in the music.
‘Heads Up!’ is a very nice 60’s blues album played by two excellent musicians, who know their classics inside and out. And yet I can’t help but feel like I just spent 40 minutes listening to an Otis Rush album.
Tracks:
01. Love and Pain Blues
02. Transmutation Blues
03. Heads Up
04. Good Smelling Woman
05. Losing Hand
06. Blues For The End Of The World
07. Far Away From Home
08. Midnight Hour Blues
09. Tell Me
10. Strangely Happy Blues
Website: https://sirjobaltablues.com/