West Eats Meet

CD Details

Product Description

Listening to Harry Manx’s West Eats Meet is sure to stir the romanticist and dreamer in anyone who has the pleasure of hearing it. The accompaniment is sparse throughout this album, with only occasional tabla drums and keyboards added to the above mentioned instrumentation. In places you will hear some absolutely lovely background vocals, as well as harmonies, provided by newcomer Emily Braden and Australian trio The Heavenly Lights.

Review

With each album Manx releases, his deep Indo-Canadian roots music becomes more defined and further accomplished. The title West Eats Meet is a play on Ravi Shankar’s West Eats Meat, a nod both to an Indian musical giant and Manx’s own western usage of Indian instruments, folk melodies and styles. Manx strays a bit from his standard blues idiom with this album and introduces gospel flavours with the help of backing singers Emily Braden and Australian trio the Heavenly Lights. The latter add depth and a churchy soul to The Great Unknown and, along with Manx’s banjo, Sitting on Top of the World becomes a down from the mountain call to worship out of an as yet undiscovered Baptist/Hindu hymnal. One of two covers on the album, Sonny Boy Williamson’s Help Me features an under pad of delicate drones and a slinky slide solo injecting a little Rajasthan into this Chicago standard. Manx’s instrumentals are always ingenious takes on sitar-like phrasing, note bending and melodies and the two offered here Forgive and Remember and Hector s Song don’t disappoint. Where early records like Dog My Cat and Wise and Otherwise often separated the blues material from the Indian-influenced material, West Eats Meet makes an effort to merge them on nearly every song. Tabla and Dholak add basic but fundamental percussion, complimenting Manx’s steady backbeat accent on his guitar strings, and not only does he play his Mohan Veena and tambura on many tracks, he even sings in a raga style on The Ways of Love. This is the album’s greatest strength as it highlights what really makes Manx a unique artist. Very few people are making this sort of world folk blues fusion and if Harry Manx continues steeping this melting pot, the world will have to take notice of this innovator soon. –Exclaim! Magazine

If there ever was a wandering minstrel / troubadour still to be found in the blues it is unquestionably Harry Manx West Eats Meet is about as close to flawless as an album as they come. On a scale of 1-10, this one is a 20. –Steve Hinrichsen, Blues Bytes

If there ever was a wandering minstrel / troubadour still to be found in the blues it is unquestionably Harry Manx West Eats Meet is about as close to flawless as an album as they come. On a scale of 1-10, this one is a 20. –Steve Hinrichsen, Blues Bytes