10/27/2006

Bruce Sylvester

After years of recording in her native Australia, singer/guitarist/writer Fiona Boyes shows she has absorbed not only the classic blues licks, but also, better yet, classic blues attitude on her first U.S. venture. Produced in Austin, Texas, by guitarslinger Mark “Kaz” Kazanoff, Lucky 13 trucks from Chicago to Memphis to New Orleans to the swamps stylistically, with Boyes’ husky swagger resembling Maria Muldaur’s brassy vocals. Bob Margolin adds slide guitar à la his longtime bossman Muddy Waters.

The slow and smoldering “Stranger In Your Eyes” has a Windy City groove with an accordion break for a bit of Tex-Mex flavor. With cross-legged pianist Marcia Ball helping out, a horn-driven Crescent City strut enhances the mood of “Celebrate My Curves,” an anthem for happy women whose bodies hardly conform to starved fashion-model images.

Simultaneously traditional and contemporary while variously buoyant and downhearted, the disc is ever on the move — just as the blues has been historically. Boyes and Kazanoff understand how to keep their tracks from sounding too similar without losing the collections’ cohesiveness here on her rock-solid U.S. debut.