Reviewed by Rob Harrison
Latestbanda is a new musical project based in Liverpool featuring musicians from across the world and, in turn, bringing together different musical genres.
The three core members of the band are J Yamel, who writes and sings, and originally came from Tangier, Keverton Kevana, singer/songwriter from Liverpool, and Murphy Eliot, composer and sound engineer, who is half French half English .
The Naked Minds album could be described as Robert Cray meets the Beautiful South, with the odd Eric Clapton flourish here and there.
The blues playing on the album is great, and anybody into that new style Chicago blues sound should give the album a listen.
The production is quite slick, but if you read the credits half of the group are sound engineers. So there you go.
The stand out tracks for me are ‘Clear Water’. A great R@B vocal set to a blues riff makes It one of the best tracks on the album.
Another song, ‘Le Coer Brule’, coming at the end of the album, also stands out. Utilising the French lyrics gives it a poetic edge .
The sax player Brian Sax Jones is all over the album, which is not a bad thing, as his sax playing is really good and the sax fills are thoughtful and poetic too.
So, overall worth a listen. At the moment the album appears only available on Bandcamp with a physical CD not available at present, but you can give it a try on Bandcamp.
Latestbanda is free to listen to, so give it a whirl maybe.