Valkyrian Music

Papaslide
The Deepest Pain
Released 27th March 2015
Blues Rock
Released via M.I.G.-MUSIC GmbH in cooperation with Dust on The Tracks Records

‘The Deepest Pain’ is the third album from the Norwegian blues rock band Papaslide. It is the follow up to ‘What We Are Living For’ which was released back in 2011. Papaslide started out as a project of the blues musician Rune Nordvik. This album acts as homage to the legendary blues rock artist Johnny Winter who passed away last year. It includes covers of three of his songs: Master Mechanic, If You Got a Good Woman and Serious As a Heart Attack.

My knowledge of blues rock is limited but I decided to keep an open mind and give this a try. The first thing that I discovered; which came as a bit of surprise coming from an album entitled ‘The Deepest Pain’, is that the music is strangely uplifting and pleasant to listen to. I’m not entirely sure why that is, maybe it’s something to do with Nordvik’s slide-guitar or deep soul music vocals in the title track or Don’t Keep Fightin’ With Your Soul. What ever it is, it clearly works well…

Even the occasional improvised part, which has always bothered me in this type of music, doesn’t seem out of place on here. I can see how some of these songs might encourage people to dance along. Two tracks which definitely fit that category are the catchy Got To Have You and Vooing You. The latter is a great example of how the three guitar styles – acoustic, electric and the slide-guitar can work together in harmony to produce an enjoyable song. Last but not least are their skillfully executed covers of Serious As a Heart Attack by Johnny Winters and Give Me My Blues by Albert Collins which underline their admiration for these musicians as well as their love of blues rock.

Overall, this has been a pleasant surprise. I was expecting this album to be slow, dull and melancholic. It turned out to be the complete opposite. I actually enjoyed listening to some of the songs. Well done Papaslide!

4/5

Iza Raittila

This entry was posted on 1st February 2015 at 9:41 pm and is filed under Uncategorized with tags Blues rock, Johnny Winter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.