Matt Backer, The Blues Kitchen - review

This tall, young bluesman is a cool customer. His CV includes Rumer and ABC, whose singer Martin Fry joined in a couple of numbers. Born in New Orleans, he was raised in Mexico, Venezuela, Belgium and the Caribbean - "dad was an oilman" - picking up guitar and vocals with a teenage band called Voodoo Meatbucket and finding an early Ray Charles vinyl album that changed his life. "It showed me that the blues is as modern as you want it to be."

Switching between a big-bodied steel-string acoustic, an old Telecaster and a heavy-metal Les Paul, Backer sparingly plugged his album, The Impulse Man, while touching many blues bases. From Elmore James's It Hurts Me Too he fast-forwarded to the sardonic Mose Allison's I'm a Middleclass White Boy (Just Tryna Have Some Fun).

He also brought ancient and modern guitar technique to the Kitchen, mixing solid steel-bottleneck with sophisticated diminished chords and fat dominant-sevenths and ninths. Behind him, bass-guitarist Simon Edwards and lanky drummer Jim Kimberley hung tighter and swung harder than many a jazz rhythm section. Their skies look blue.

Every Sunday from 6pm: "The best blues jam in London".

Matt Backer