Album Review: THE KATE LUSH BAND – Headlines – Released Independently.
Australian born Kate Lush leads the band on vocals, but this is definitely not just her with backing musicians. This album highlights that they are very much a band unit with additional horns along with Dave Hole playing slide guitar on a couple of tracks.
Kate’s vocal style is a soulful one where she is equally at home singing ballads or covering more gritty Rhythm & Blues songs. All the material has been written by Kate with some support from other band members.
Kate is a superb singer with crystal clear clarity which is suited to the majority of the mid-tempo material although she certainly earns her stripes on the harder rocking song, Weakness on which the band tweak their amplifiers to the maximum and guest Dave Hole plays his slide to perfection, joining Matt Roberts to provide a twin guitar assault.
The tracks with the Horns have a lot more depth as you would expect and both the title song Headline and Sanctuary are muscular songs that work well with the full band sound, generating some foot-tapping moments, these tracks are commercial songs that I am sure will be picked up for radio play.
This a soulful and at times funky album full of excellent songs that use the Blues formula without getting into what I consider to be the pure Blues field, some of the ballads are a bit too slick for my liking but overall this is good soulful album performed by a very tight band.
Album Review by Adrian Blacklee
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