”This one should be chasing it down the awards road, as it’s a cracker. There isn’t a duff track on offer, so blues rockers need to be checking this out quickly”

Off to Finland for some blues now.  And it’s the sixth album from Micke Bjorklof & Blue Strip, even if they are a new name to me.  But blow me down with a big blowy thing, but they’re good. I should have known that because when they travelled to Rockfield Studios in Wales to record this, it was to work with multi Grammy award winning producer, John Porter.  Now he may have spent time working with shite like Billy Bragg and the Smiths, but it was his later work with the likes of Buddy Guy, B.B King, Taj Mahal, Keb Mo and Santana that has filled his mantelpiece with awards.  And I assume he doesn’t have to wrok with rubbish nowadays. And so to Micke Bjorklof & Blue Strip who have been playing the blues across Scandinavia for over 20 years, with their last record “After The Flood” voted as best Finnish blues album of the year on Radio Suomi ( I take it Erja Lyytinen didn’t have a record that year).  And this one should be chasing it down the awards road, as it’s a cracker.  Musically it veers from Chicago to ZZ Top, to mainstream blues rock with some slide guitar from Lefty Leyeppanen that lifts every song it appears on. There isn’t a duff track on offer, so blues rockers need to be checking this out quickly.  No, quicker than that.
-Stuart A. Hamilton, The Rocker