No Slip Ups Here (God's Great Banana Skin - Chris Rea)

Member Name: ultras67

Product:	God's Great Banana Skin - Chris Rea
Date:	21/12/01 (52 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: laid back, smokey atmosphere

Disadvantages: too samey & laid back for some people

With a typical low key start to an album it begins with a slow electric guitar played mournfully, then you hear a voice sounding even more half asleep than usual drifting into ‘Nothing To Fear’.

God’s Great Banana Skin is another Chris Rea album. Like his other albums the songs begin slowly, and allow plenty of space for Rea’s fluid blues like guitar and his dark-as-a-dungeon vocals.

This is many ways is Road to Hell Part 2, as this is the follow up perhaps its not surprising that he – perhaps unconsciously – keeps the same feel and rhythms. The same long lazy guitar so reminiscent of Ry Cooder and the deep south blues and that voice. The voice that sounds like it has smoked the forests of Cuba bare. However he does it, he has produced another album where the voice, the guitar and the words all seamlessly fit and gel together to the point that you cannot imagine anyone else making this album.

‘Miles Was A Cigarette’ and ‘Nineties Blues’ are slow pieces, their atmosphere simply an excuse for lyrical repetition and more of that gloomy voice and guitar. ‘Too Much Pride’ and ‘There She Goes’ agreeably break the mould—both benefit from solid tunes, memorable choruses and some noticeable female backing vocals which help buoy Rea’s lugubrious singing. ‘Soft Top, Hard Shoulder’ wraps up another Chris Rea album.

A perfect album for that lazy sunny Sunday afternoon, so sit back, drink that drink, read that book and let time slip by with the most laid back man and guitar in rock.

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