Canter Bridge

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It must have something to do with drugs, alcohol, or very, very poor personal hygiene.

Those are the only three reasons robust enough to explain why Chris Rea is not a household name. He is a simply superb bluesman. The Blue Cafe is an album worth selling the coffee table for.

Rea’s writing, voice, and guitar are a three-punch knockout. Yet a highlight of Blue Cafe is the bass of Silvan Marc and the mixing and production that bring out this amazing artist’s work without letting it overpower the dozen tracks that make this CD indispensible for the blues connoiseur and highly recommended for followers of serious rock and roll.

Highlights? Oh, where to begin …

‘Square Peg, Round Hole’ is the way a record ought to be kicked off. If you’ve never heard Chris Rea before, you’ll be on iTunes or Amazon before this intro track is half over. ‘Since I found you’ is one of the rare upbeat tunes worth risking a blues album on. Rea almost disqualifies himself from the genre with this tune, but his guitar saves the day and wins him absolution for almost crossing over to happiness.

‘Thinking of you’ is almost spooky for its sketching out of lonely love sliced off from the loved one by distance.

Then, ‘Anyone Quite Like You’ with its Rea signature opener:

Ten thousand princes
I’ve seen them all
I’ve seen them come
And I see them fall
I’ve watched them win
I’ve watched them lose
Since you’ve been around
No one gets to choose
Because when the game begins
And the time is now
When there is no more talking
Only here and now
There is only here and now
I ain’t seen anything quite like you
Ain’t been anyone quite like you

This is as much enthusiasm—always motivated by a single human being who has won Rea’s love—as this artist allows himself. Apart from the personal linkage of lover to lover, Rea wears an anarchic suspicion of the powerful and the polished (‘Shadow of the Big Man’).

At least in his art, he inhabits a gray land where authenticity is the cardinal virtue and ostentation its opposing sin.

Within that world, Rea’s preternaturally expressive voice and his persuasive guitar eloquently narrate what it’s like to live with no larger hope.

This is blues. Sad. Occasionally wistful. Music at its most compelling, here East of Eden.