IT WOULD be no surprise if Ray Bonneville attracted comments along "crikey, there's only one of him" lines from casual listeners on his travels.
Not, though, by sounding as if he's playing a guitar with 50 fingers. Bonneville's approach is less intricate, rootsier and more integrated, with rhythm strokes and bass string riffs grooving over his resonant footboard to create a completely self-contained sound.
It's a sound that draws on the traditions and shuffling, rolling metres that power Tony Joe White and JJ Cale's music. And while Bonneville doesn't have quite the same line in memorable songs or the characterful singing of these two masters, he can create and sustain a world of bad luck and troubles relieved by the good-time feel of a Saturday night dance.
His Cemetery Road goes right into the heart of a girl trying to get to know her estranged and now deceased father, and the almost spoken Who's Talkin' to Me conveys a character who's genuinely haunted.
Where Bonneville scores highest, though, is in slipping a bottleneck over his little finger and sending stinging, wild and spidery slide-guitar lines out over a determined groove that, for all his undeniable affability, rocks with a dark and scary compulsion.
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