Octo_Russ

Steve Winwood [Refugees Of The Heart]

I discovered Steve Winwood by buying a cheap cassette of this album, found in a second-hand shop in London for £1, this was the way i would delve into new Artists, scour hundreds of cassettes, only costing £1 each, a £1 risk that was worth losing, but the gains i found this way, and this is one of the better discoveries, of course any cassette album that proved to be a great find, i quickly purchased the disc of, and this has become a real favourite of mine, his other albums really don't match up, i played this disc last year, and wrote about it in my Blog [10th September 2010].

Steve Winwood was born in England in 1948, now 63 years old, a real multi instrumentalist, plus he seems to have gone through many genres of music, starting out with Jazz, moving on to Blues, and traversed through a number of bands, the Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, and Blind Faith, but his best work has been as a soloist, he recorded this disc in 1990 i believe, i like the front cover photography [by Douglas Brothers], with Winwood wearing a shirt with a piece of paper stapled to it, which has a heart drawn on it, it really goes well with the title of the album, and it's certainly a stunner of a title for an album.

Winwood has a certain funky element to his music, he employs sax, hammond, and vibraphone to the mix, there's certainly a groove to the whole thing, almost all of the songs were written by Winwood and Will Jennings, on this listen i liked tracks 1, 5 & 8, with track 5 'Another Deal Goes Down Down' the very best, this was the track i was first impressed with when i first played the album, it has Larry Byrom on slide guitar, with some excellent work throughout, Winwood has his strong loud vocals, the lyrics in the second verse give the album its title,

On the street, the refugees

From a war, that was lost in the heart

Winwood on keys and hammond, and Byrom and Winwood create a lovely gooey mix of swirling organ and wailing guitar, with Russ Kunkel with thunderous drums at times, the outro is a nice intoxicating mix of everything, and the track end with a superb organ swirl, great stuff.

Here's Steve Winwood singing Another Deal Goes Down on YouTube.