Fresh from his sterling vocal performance on last year’s excellent Shy album, Lee Small makes a splash with this solo album. He has previously sung with other bands including Cloven Hoof, Pride and appears on forthcoming albums from Phenomena and Gypsy Rose (two of the band – Martin Kronlund and Imre Daun – guest on this album).

 

As the name suggests (taken from the famous Daphne du Maurier novel) much of the lyrical content has a nautical theme, including the bizarre closing instrument ‘The Renegade Accordion Player’ which sees a snippet of the Kansas classic ‘Carry On My Wayward Son’ played on the accordion!

 

Don’t go expecting melodic hard rock, as apart from ‘Walk The Plank’ it is much more a blues affair. It reminds me a lot of Paul Rodger solo albums and in fact Lee Small’s vocals at times recall Rodgers and Glenn Hughes. Plenty of high quality blues guitar to enjoy as well, none more so than on ‘Smuggler’s Blues’ and ‘I am The Sea’, the latter song drifts along nicely without ever becoming a background song.

 

Totally different than his work with Shy and Phenomena and it could well open his singing talents up to a whole new audience, specifically a blues based one.

 

Jason Ritchie