Proud Mary Love & Light

Being signed to Noel Gallagher's label and having a name such as theirs, Proud Mary came in for a load of sneering on the release of their debut album some three years ago. Naming it The Same Old Blues probably didn't help either, but at its core lay a bunch of good enough songs that more than deserved the 7/10 rating No Ripcord stumped up.

Three years is a long time to follow up though, especially when the band has suddenly halved in size to singer Greg Griffin and guitarist 'Spot' Newsome (though Andy Rourke has signed up for bass duties on tour). With any momentum gathered surely lost, Love & Light would no doubt be predicted as a potential plane crash of an album by many. But... err... it isn't. While Proud Mary haven't totally abandoned the ultra-retro approach of their earlier work, Love To Love You for one does at least sound as if has been recorded in the last twenty years, and Griffin is blessed with one of the stronger voices around - it may well have been better suited to fronting the Bluesbreakers but it's fine in 2004.

So, what we have is a selection of numbers which may seem at times pretty much blues rock-by-numbers, Griffin and Newsome have a good enough knack of putting together a solid tune, though the album closer The End disappoints by not coming close to matching the psychedelic freak out of it's namesake, instead being a rather bland affair with plonking piano. As seems to be the custom these days, don't forget to keep your finger from the stop button when the silence hits as there's the ubiquitous 'hidden track' to find. In truth, the track is built around a very pleasant melody, acting as a better finale than the listed song.

Objectivity is the key to listening to a Proud Mary record: anyone searching for new, exciting sounds isn't going to have their world set on fire by anything here. Those with a record collection featuring early Stones, who thought that Primal Scream only really hit form with Give Out But Don't Give Up, these are the people Proud Mary are looking to snare into their world. Love & Light has enough harmonica blasts, gravelly vocals and appropriate enough song titles (Mexico, Lady Of The Country) to have them whooping into their whiskey bottles through the night.