I recently acquired two heart-stopping blues albums: Unconditional and Can You Stand the Heat by Ana Popovic. I now find myself listening to these songs again and again. To say they're good is to admit to a lack of word power skills.
Out of Belgrade Serbia, Popovic can do it all. She writes songs with grit and heart. She sings with an authenticity and power that transforms every song into a revelation. And she plays guitar (both acoustic and electric) like she's channeling any number of Rock and Blues legends; Eric Clapton, Albert King, And now I'm going to go out on a limb - Jimi Hendrix.
She has released 4 albums in total (The first was Still Making History and the second a live album An Evening at Trasimeno Lake ). I went to Popovic's web site and sampled songs from each of these - and yes I loved them - but I was especially interested in her first release, Still Making History. I wanted to see what this extraordinary woman sounded like when she first sprang out of the gate. Would she have the same sound almost a decade ago?
She did not. I sampled a song Hungry and immediately smiled. It reminded me of another debut album released over forty years ago. I'm talking about the first James Gang album that introduced the world to Joe Walsh. Hungry took me back Funk 49 and Walk Away.
A year later when she played at Trasimeno lake she was already evolving the sophisticated chops and powerful vocals she would display on Unconditional and Can You Stand the Heat. By the time these gems were released, Ana had morphed into a force to be reckoned with.
I'm going to leave you with a simple way to see if I'm jiving you about this artist. Find her web site. Sample a few songs from each of her albums. Be prepared to be blown away.
Merry Christmas all. Oh by the way, Ana was nominated for Blues Female Artist of 2014. I just thought you might like to know.
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