2018 –SBS Records
Release Date : March 02, 2018
By Phillip Smith;
Jan 20, 2018
Three decades after recording her first album New Experience in 1988, Georgia songstress/guitarist
Michelle Malone is releasing her fifteenth studio album, Slings & Arrows. This bodacious record, smothered in southern
rock and hard-edged blues, is loaded with lyrics so sharp, they cut to the bone. I’m captivated right from the start. With Malone on vocals, guitars,
harmonica, and mandolin, her band consists of Doug Kees on electric
guitar, bassist Robby Handley (Larkin Poe), drummer Christopher
Burroughs, and percussionist Trish Land. The album contains nine original songs and a
fascinating cover of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” which
was performed as a duet with Shawn Mullins.
I happily soak up the wonderful Sixties soul doused
over “Sugar on My Tongue”. Malone’s
vocals are smooth as glass, and take on a Motown persona, while the band
is holding court in a Memphis Stax fashion. It sounds great. The foot-stomping, hill country blues of “Beast’s
Boogie” cradles me in its dancing hypnotic rhythm. Malone tops this favorite with a big juicy
scoop of harmonica and a delicious side of slide. I love how “Civil War” begins so delicately
and magnificently evolves into a full-fledge southern rock head-banger. A feeling of melancholy washes over as Malone
beautifully sings from the bottom of a broken heart in “The Flame”. It’s an amazing song indeed. In fact, the whole album is plumb terrific.
