Azzurri blues.
Gianni Tbay was mentioned recently in Rick Bayles’ Vox Continental feature, which reviewed Tbay’s sixth album, “As The Tide Gets High and Low” (2022) and says this new one is “also impressive, but with a more muscular band feel about it, largely due it seems, to long-time friend, the poli-instrumentalist and sound engineer Guglielmo Nodari”.
Tbay comes from Rome but has been based in Turin since 2014. Basically, “The Blues Against Youth” is a one-person band project. Tbay performs vocals, guitar, bass drum, hi-hat and whistle… simultaneously. A graphic designer turned travelling musician, he writes and sings in English and has a penchant for releasing music on vinyl. The album was recorded by Manuel Volpe in Torino and mastered by Matt Bordin at Outside Inside Studio in Treviso. This is definitely an Italian job. The band sound might come from not just Guglielmo Nodari, who plays bass, piano and organ, but Mario Rossi and Simone Pozzi’s drumming, Davide Richichi on trumpet and Luca Colombrita on harmonica.
There’s an interesting cover of John Lee Hooker’s ‘How Can You Do It’. Chiara Montovaneli adds another layer of backing vocals to the standout album track ‘Learn this Right’. Tbay says the classy album cover is a photograph his dad took back in 1974 in the region of Abruzzo, capturing a flock of ibex hanging around. But he says it is needless to look for any extra meaning related, “It is what it is, my new album cover”. Likewise, there’s not many hooks or “extra meaning” to Tbay’s lyrics, but his Azzurri-blues is an enjoyable listen. His low-frequency singing is a mixed bag, as are a few of the track arrangements (yodelling on ‘Goin’ To California’), but his open tuning, fingerpicking (‘Snakes Away’) guitar work is indeed impressive. Tbay must be an interesting watch and have more of a raw charge out there in the European festival circuit.
