Little Albert - The Road Not Taken (2024) Hi-Res

I always enjoy the names of the old Blues men. A look through any of the annals of blues history and you’ll find Blind Willy this, Big Bill the other, hell there’s even a Bumble Bee somewhere if I recall. So Little Albert is following the grand tradition. You know him better as Alberto Piccolo – from Mesa, the Italian Doom boys. Little Albert isn’t so much an alter ego as a labour of love. He evidently adores the blues. That feeling of reverence and warmth is all over the seven tracks here.

“Still Alive” is blues from the dark side. It lurks in the shadows waiting. There’s a strident lead, yet it seems to swirl, but never mind any of that, because when the solo hits, that’s all that matters here. It’s glorious. And complemented by the bass.

And the bass (played by Alex Fernet) is to the fore again on “Demon Woman” – a rather classic-sounding blues romp. Little Albert’s woman has done him wrong, but you can almost forget the lyrics and just immerse yourself in the truly wonderful guitar playing on show.

“See My Love Coming Home” and the superb “Hiding All My Love Away” come from a similar place to the likes of Felix Rabin. The soul of the songs, the fact they go to prog like places. There’s so much light and shade here.

The final member of the trio, drummer Diego Dal Bon augments the songs by letting them breathe, rather than pounding his kit to within an inch of its life. That is especially true on the cover of Little Walter’s “Blue And Lonesome”, which is done with little to no bombast. It’s gorgeous.

And that might be true of the rest of it too – indeed they might all be covers for all I know, so classic does this sound – but it almost doesn’t matter who (if anyone) performed “Magic Carpet Ride” before, only that it sounds like it belongs right here.

At times here, and that’s particularly true on “This House Ain’t No Home”, it’s almost as though Little Albert has reached inside himself to pull these songs out.

That might be the defining point about the blues as a genre too? It certainly sounds like it is on “The Road Not Taken.”

It’s fair to say that of all the genres, maybe blues has survived the most untouched throughout the years and as a consequence perhaps the three piece power trio thing is one of the hardest to get wrong. But it is also fair to say that it’s difficult to get as right as this too.