Willy DeVille - Pistola

Willy DeVille has been around. Starting with his pre-punk combo Mink DeVille, he’s served up an uncanny blend of roots music, blues, zydeco, soul, funk – almost every type of sound that gestated in North America between 1875 and 1975. Sounding like a cross of Bob Dylan, Dr. John and Willie Nelson, DeVille fires the first shot from ‘Pistola’s with ‘So So Real’, a fatalistic number from a man who recognizes his music may not make a mark on the world, but who can’t stop making it. From there DeVille crosses through a wide range of American music: Countrified blues on Paul Siebel’s ‘Louise’, a eulogy and testament for New Orleans on ‘The Band Played On’, which sounds like Van Morrison pickled in Cajun cookery. The slink of ‘Been There Done That’ has a funky tomcat strut linked to the 30-year hindsight of the protagonist of the Velvet Underground’s ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’. The romantic cha-cha of ‘I Remember the First Time’ treads a sinuous course around a tale of love unrequited. ‘Stars That Speak’ provides the only stumble, and some inadvertent comedy, with DeVille speak-singing his way through a tune that sounds like something Scott Walker might pen in the mid-1970's, as performed by Tom Waits. The spoken word tale of ‘The Mountains of Manhattan’ recast as Native American myth, woodwind accompaniment and hand drums included, works far better. DeVille gets excellent support from a band which packs just as much hard time. To name but two, guitarist Josh Sklair has served in sundry outfits, most notably as Etta James’ musical director, while keyboardist and producer John Philip Shenale has racked up a ridiculously long resume performing with everyone from Tori Amos to Zachary Richard. He works his magic on a range of instruments from the clavinet to the synthesizer, stopping only to tap some orchestral bells on the sepulchral, old-time love ballad ‘When I Get Home’. DeVille, like former Mott the Hoople frontman Ian Hunter, Nick Cave and the aforementioned Dylan, Nelson and Waits is one of those rare artists who seem to have dragged their prime years across the decades, and ‘Pistola’ is another triumph of experience.

Track Listing:-

1 So so Real
2 Been There Done That
3 When I Get Home
4 Louise
5 The Band Played On
6 You Got the World in Your Hands
7 I Remember the First Time
8 Stars That Speak
9 I'm Gonna Do Something the Devil Never Did
10 The Mountains of Manhattan