As one of the leading exponents of modern blues, we always highly recommend any Josh Smith recording. What sets Smith’s most recent offering apart from his previous albums (aside from the fact that it’s largely an instrumental record) is a bold and strident Nashville horn section that adds power and swagger to Lemar Carter’s drums, Calvin Turner’s bass and Larry Goldings’ organ. Weighing in at just 36 minutes from beginning to end, ‘Bird Of Passage’ boasts just 7 tracks, each one a jazz-blues gem.
The record opens to the shuffle of the instrumental ‘Double Cross’, showcasing Smith’s unmistakable phrasing and mean, yet clean, guitar tone.
Smith turns crooner on the second track, ‘Brand New’ – the record’s only non-intrumental – a bombastic slow blues.
Elsewhere, ‘Hopeless Quarters’ and ‘Fat Hair’ display echoes of Grant Green’s jazz-blues inspired phrasing.
The rhythm section of Carter and Turner really cooks on the horn-laden funk of ‘Rare Plus’. Smith brings the tempo down again for the mean and moody ‘The Wayfarer’ before launching into the Ray Charles-inspired shuffle of ‘Unauthorised Cinnamon’, closing a very special and unmissable blues album.