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Evan Nicole Bell: Shades of Blue
(Hummingbird Records, as broadcast on WVIA-FM 1/29/2025)
The influence of the blues permeates generations of styles, from jazz, to rock and roll, soul, and funk. The artists who specialize in the blues tend to present the music in more traditional styles from decades past ranging from the acoustic delta blues to the electric Chicago style blues, to the more rock-oriented varieties popularized by people like Stevie Ray Vaughan.
This week, we have an interesting new album by a young performer who brings some more contemporary influences to the music, with hints of hip-hop in some of the beats, and also in the cadence of the vocals. It’s the debut album by Evan Nicole Bell, called Shades of Blue.
Twenty-seven-year-old Evan Nicole Bell is a Texas native who was raised in Columbia, Maryland. She grew up listening to classic blues, soul and Gospel. She started on acoustic guitar in eighth grade, and her mother later gave her a classic Gibson Les Paul guitar. Ms. Bell is also a bit of a polymath. She’s an alumna of Duke University, with a graduate certificate from the Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California. She also a documentary photographer whose work as been exhibited including in the Duke University Chapel.
Her musical career took off when she uploaded a video of herself playing Albert King’s Crosscut Saw. After it was picked up by a blues-oriented site, her video went viral with millions of views. She released an EP called Runaway Girl in January 2024. Now a year later, some of the material from that EP has been incorporated into her new full-length debut release Shades of Blue.
Ms. Bell is also distinctive in that she is one of those artists who plays almost all the instruments herself by means of overdubbing, though the album does include a live performance with a band.
Ms. Bell is an impressive musician with a powerful voice, and an able guitarist, who can shred the blues with the best of them, though she is also heard on acoustic guitar. As the liner notes point out, she also plays bass, and keyboards. Drumming duties are divided between Jordan Stanley and Mark St. Pierre. The album is stylistically diverse, running from all-out electric to a couple of tunes in which the acoustic guitar is prominent. And as mentioned, there are some hints of hip-hop in among the influences, though no vocal raps.
Opening is a piece called River, which brings in some historic work-song chant influence in the backing vocals and percussion. <<>>
Quite different in sound is the following track, Liar’s Anthem which absorbs both contemporary sounds, with the hip-hop influenced vocals, but also with more old-school style simulated string arrangements. <<>>
Wish It Wasn’t You is a plaintive-sounding ballad with breakup-song lyrics, hinting at Motown soul in its sound. <<>>
One of two covers of blues tunes is Gregg Allman’s Not My Cross to Bear, in which Ms. Bell shows her electric blues guitar chops, in addition to doing a very classy vocal. <<>>
Things turn toward the acoustic side on an original composition called Flame another sad song about a love coming apart. <<>>
The other blues cover is Catfish Blues by Robert Petway. It’s a kind of down-in-the-swamp affair, except for Ms. Bell’s vocal, which combines the low-down blues mood with her refinement. <<>> The album also contains a separate live version of the song. <<>>
A tune that appeared on her EP, Runaway Girl is included on the new album in an extended form. It’s a more pop-oriented song that is nicely done. <<>>
Perhaps the least bluesy song on the album is a composition called Burn which demonstrates another side of Ms. Bell, and is a great pop-oriented song that would fit in the contemporary music scene.
Shades of Blue the new full-length debut album by Evan Nicole Bell is a formidable recording by an artist who draws on the great traditions of the blues and takes the music to new, more contemporary places. Her vocals are powerful but classy, and also notable is her work as a multi-instrumentalist, playing everything but the drums on the studio tracks. It’s also nice that she tempered her original songs, with covers of venerable blues tunes.
Our grade for audio quality is at best about a B.. There is acceptable clarity, but even the semi-acoustic tracks have in-your-face sound that leaves no room for the dynamics of the performance.
It’s always good discovering impressive new talent, especially those who can embody the influences that cross generations. Evan Nicole Bell certainly does that in spades on her hew album.
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