CD Album Review: Stephen Dale Petit – The Crave
Stephen Dale Petit (aka SDP) is a blues guitarist originally from Califonia who relocated to London in the late eighties and set himself up as the pioneer of the New Blues Movement (no, me neither). According to his press releases and the blurb in the inlay of his new album, SPD is well a respected blues player - a quote from Classic Rock even goes as far as to say ‘Petit has the fire of Freddie King, the instinct of Jimmy Page and the soul of Clapton’ – a brave statement indeed! The burning question is does ‘The Crave’ match up to expectations?
In short the answer is no. Way too long at 17 tracks, The Crave features a mixture of self penned tunes and covers. The most notable song on, and wisely the first single to be taken from the album, is ‘California’ a cover of the Tupac/Dre classic (shouldn’t that be California Love?) which is actually quite different and very good but the rest of the tracks are fairly standard blues songs that a million pub bands up and down the country could play just as well. And therein lies the problem, despite all the accolades there really is nothing here to make SDP stand out from a pub band, even Robert Johnson’s ‘Cross Road Blues’, a stone cold classic, sounds amateurish. The real nail in the coffin though is his voice which sways from over-enunciating every word to a very poor effort at imitating Dr Feelgood’s Lee Brilleaux.
2/5
Out 26th July on Universal.
