New York roots revisionist Eric Bibb invigorates a repertoire of crisp acoustic ballads with slick urban savvy, lasciviously lathering timeworn blues staples, which intermittently threaten to lurch into pastiche, with a boisterous street-wise irreverence.
Bibb exuded a lazy-faced charm throughout the show; the loping grin and knowing asides to the audience lend his angular, rather straightforward songs a zestful allure. This is blues-lite; a frothy, pleasantly bland, stylistic brew which goes down smoothly and leaves a sickly-sweet aftertaste.
Put Your Foot Down, immaculately polished and replete with drive-time radio-friendly flourishes, makes for a deceptive opener, its jumble of pop and folk cleverly wrong-footing the listener. What follows is a more predictable: a slew of finely honed, flawlessly delivered if singularly uninventive blues standards.
So the balletic Shingle by Shingle treads a fine line between grandiose melancholy and overblown melodrama, the dirge Come Back Baby reeks of mass-marketed Mississippi delta angst and treacly ballad Singing in the Heart confuses heartbreak with hokum. Only Nothing Like You Used to Do, a suffocating lament soaked with weeping mandolins, is genuinely affecting.
It would be unfair to deride Bibb as a cynical purveyor of the sort of air-brushed blues into which he is prone to lapse. There is an undeniable intensity to his performance; a raw fervour that belies the glib harmonies and bubble-gum hooks.