Wednesday 11 May 2011

Convincing Debut By The Union


When the band Winterville quit, front man Peter Shoulder started writing songs for himself. Eventually he found company in his good friend Luke Morley, who just finished the farewell tour of his rock band Thunder. And see: The Union was born. They didn't need any more musicians and recorded the songs for the self-titled début album as a duo. For this they could depend on their songwriter skills that they developed in the mentioned bands. But the album does hold more instruments and so on stage musicians are added to the band.

The Union - The Union (Ronald Says 8 out of 10)
The album turned into a nice collection of songs, that vary between up tempo rock ('You Know My Name') to small intimate blues songs ('Come Rain Come Shine'). Once and a while the gentlemen go wild and rock hard, like in 'Step Up To The Plate'. Morley shows he knows his way on the guitar and makes it whine and scream in a great way. But it's especially Shoulder's voice that impresses the most. It sounds powerful where needed and warm with lots of soul in the more quiet parts. It makes some slow blues songs simply heavenly beautiful. Listen to 'Lilies' for example, that holds a lot of emotion. Shoulder won a W.C. Handy Blues Foundation-award in 2006 as the third Brit ever (following Eric Clapton and Peter Green). On this record he's showing why he earned the award, since the man truly writes beautiful songs.

Maybe both men aren't making any new music, which is pretty hard anyway in this genre. But whatever they do is grand and convincing. They show that they have been able to put together the best of both their former bands. This makes the record a true recommendation for blues rock lovers. Hopefully we will hear more from them in the future than we did from the other bands. They already supported Thin Lizzy and joined Belgium rock band Triggerfinger on tour in The Netherlands in March. Later this year they will be touring with Whitesnake in the UK. The duo should be able to light the fire considerably for the no doubt explosive shows of the main act.

Listen to 'The Union' on Spotify

This review has been published on ROAR E-Zine in Dutch over here.

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