Jimmy Thackery and the Drivers - Solid Ice (Telarc)

This album begins with three rather predictable rhythm and blues tracks, each featuring a heavy-metal guitar solo - and then Jimmy Thackery slows things down and the music starts to get interesting.

Hobart's Blues is a traditional blues instrumental, while Daze In May and Blue Tears are both gentle country songs, enlivened by some impressive blues-guitar riffs.

One Or The Other and Solid Ice are very long offerings, and sound like they were left off a Dire Straits album.

The slower tempos allow Thackery to add ever more inventive embellishments to the music, and he also does a Jimi Hendrix cover version, Who Knows, containing the usual pyrotechnics.

Thackery joined The Nighthawks, a US blues bar band, in 1974. He left the group in 1987 to set up the Assassins, a six-piece rhythm and blues band. He has been playing with the Drivers since 1991, and has recorded 36 albums in a 33-year career and reportedly performs in public up to 300 times a year.

This album is a good showcase of Thackery's guitar skills and blues singing.

Rating: 3/5