Angel Forrest: Electric Love (Ad Litteram) 16th March 2018

(4 / 5)

There’s not much more that needs to be said here; other than to tell you that this really is an excellent live album.

Angel Forrest is considered one of the best, if not the best Canadian female blues vocalist on the International scene today. Warmth, humour and maturity permeates her vocals, and the electric band are wonderfully loose, seasoned and dynamic.

Is it any surprise? Angel has three decades of live and recording experience and has won the Canadian Maple Blues award for female vocalist of the year five times (including this year) and has toured worldwide… except for ONE country….. but more on that later.

She has quite a bit of Janis Joplin in her voice, and we learn that she got her start and a lot of attention in Canada for her tribute to Joplin.

However, Forrest is her own woman and as with her 2014 acoustic live album “Live: Love At The Palace”, her stage presence and vocals supernaturally radiate out of the speakers and pull you in. No mean feat – however she is backed by musicians of pedigree and experience, and it shows.

Recorded live at the Centre Des Arts Juliette, Juliette-Lassonde in St-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Canada and produced by Angel’s guitarist, producer and musical partner Denis Coulombe with her second guitar man Ricky Paquette.

The record does a wonderful job of capturing the atmosphere of an exhilarating first rate live show. The material covers a range of original numbers and also classics from Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin and some old blues gold.

And so Angel and her excellent band will finally tour the one country that hasn’t yet seen her perform live – The UK – throughout March. Angel will be accompanied by her two fabulous top line guitarists Denis and Ricky, and all three sing too, for an eight-date tour which kicks off in Sheffield on 15th March.

Summing up: This album comes very highly recommended and on the strength of it, I would kindly suggest you try and catch one of her debut UK live shows in the next few weeks. Tell ’em Giles sent you!