Shake Your Hips! - Blues Twins (2009)

This band may come from France, but the blood running through their veins is as blue as can be and with their second album, “Blues Twins”, these five guys will convert even the most blasé to Blues music. “Blues Twins” is in fact a double album, one ‘live’ and one recorded in studio: very daring for a first album but it turns out to be a real class act. We start off with the ‘live’ album and ‘Slow Down’ goesoff with a bang and is followed by a very punchy ‘Can't Keep A Good Man Down’. Shake your Hips really mean business when they play ‘live’ and let out the stage animals they are as in this ‘live’ recording of the concert they did one Summer night of 2008 in Nantes. It’s molten lava destroying everything in its way including those CDs you were listening to and thought were pretty good. The cocktail of covers on this CD may have been a weakness but, in fact, the band’s interpretation is incredibly efficient and, from the first track, you can’t help feeling they’re a band to be reckoned with. After the ‘live’ album, you’re left wondering whether it was a mistake starting with the ‘live’ CD. But there’s nothing else to do but slip the studio album in and from the first track, ‘Swingharp’, an instrumental piece, you’re nailed to your chair. It’s shaking, swinging, smouldering and undoubtedly up there with the ‘live’ recording. And yes, it’s a relief as it could have been a disappointment after such an extraordinary first album. The journey goes on with the bluest Blues you’ve heard in a long time, subtle and direct at the same time and with a talent straight from red hot embers. The same intense red which sets alight ‘Gathering’ with its breathtaking harp intro: it’s as if you’re hearing the bagpipes in the Highlands with the guitar, drums and bass coming out of the woods like a Scottish mist and nothing can resist it. The band, accompanied by some impressive guests, has now found their Holy Grail with their songwriting. We can’t mention them all but there is something really special: ‘Eight O’Clock Blues’ is one of the most authentic Blues songs of the year and ‘The End Of It’, a slow Blues number as powerful and intense as the famous ‘The End’ from the Doors and that’s saying something. Shake Your Hips is not yet another French band, not another chorus, not another Blues band but THE Blues band of the moment and a band with a huge heart, the sort of band we rarely hear these days. Go on, Shake Your Hips.