With over fifty albums under his belt, twenty-eight of which have reached #1 on the Billboard Blues Albums charts, American blues-guitar maestro Joe Bonamassa shows no signs of slowing down. His 2023 do-over of his best-selling album “Blues Deluxe” brought those old classics back to life with so much vigor that the announcement for a new album sure made me prick my interest. Bonamassa has been touring Europe recently with his powerhouse supergroup BLACK COUNTRY COMMUNION, featuring Glenn Hughes, Jason Bonham, and Derek Sherinian – names with which one might be more familiar from somewhere else than blues-rock entirely. So, by the looks of it, Bonamassa has already made his big breakthrough, but the new album is, nonetheless, entitled “Breakthrough” and it is due out on July 18th, 2025, via Provogue Records and his own label J&R Adventures. The album marks a new, more adventurous chapter in his career by investing in emotionally rich storytelling and stylistic exploration that shifts from blues to acoustic ballads and swaggering hard rock like nothing to it. Let’s face it, now and then, after a hard day of moshing at a metal festival or when life has turned into a labyrinth of chaos, the best thing you can do is put on the finest blues-rock has to offer. I guess the appeal of blues music stems from its highly cathartic nature, its raw, emotional depth, and great guitar solos, obviously, and this album exhibits all of these tell-tale symptoms of a great blues offering with a steady hand.
The title track, a funky blues-riffer, is served up front. It doesn’t yet lay out all the cards on the table, but sets the tone for the album, in a way. Yeah, sure, the song is somewhat formulaic as per the conventions of the genre, but it’s got everything I expect from a good blues banger – beefy guitar riffs, fiery Hammond stabs, raspy blues belting, and smoky feel overall. Bonamassa is not one of those artists that I would expect to blow things up in an indiscriminate manner, but rather season the blues template with whatever spices sprinkled in moderation, and what he adds to the age-old blues paradigm is pretty damn succulent.
The next couple of tracks are buzzing with a slightly more Texas boogie-like tinge about them. For a casual blues aficionado living on this side of the Atlantic, the first thing that comes to mind is Stevie Ray Vaughan, of course, albeit Bonamassa isn’t perhaps such an untamed force of nature, neither as a guitarist nor as a vocalist. The opening riff in “Trigger Finger,” for example, resonates with nothing short of a slapping SRV feel. I’m pretty sure it won’t take long before Bonamassa‘s name carries just as much weight in the blues world as those mythological old-school figures – if it hasn’t happened already.
While the album mostly traverses rather familiar blues waters, a couple of songs stood out for me – and probably for the most unexpected reasons, too. First, the mellow “Drive by the Exit Sign” proved a delicious cross between Dr. John-like New Orleans grooves and, of all things, the pioneering British hard-rockers, FREE. Then, the slow-burning blues ballad, “Broken Record,” triggered haunting SOEN flashbacks, even! I mean, this song would have fit on the 2017 album, “Lykaia,” by this Swedish prog-metal squad just fine. I’ll be damned… Needless to say, the song became my instant favorite, even though I’m notoriously opposed to ballads by default. Okay, the hard-rock-tinted ballad, “Live After Dark,” didn’t prove quite as memorable, but to impress me with two ballads on the same album would have been quite a stretch, anyway!
The album has a few more tracks that did not instantly win me over, but, of course, there have to be peaks and valleys, if only for the peaks to sound even more impressive. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about the prominently acoustic “Shake This Ground” nor the honky-tonk boogie of “Still Walking With Me” at first. They did not prompt me to push the skip button, either, so I might eventually grow to like them. Who knows? I haven’t yet made up my mind about the uptempo banger, “You Don’t Own Me,” either. It has its moments. The song’s main riff resonates with an almost Brian Setzer-like rockabilly aura, which is slightly intriguing. Maybe it should have gone full-on “Runaway Boys” for me to hit a home run, I don’t know.
The album closes with the 12/8 shuffles of “Pain’s on Me,” which triggers subtle flashbacks of the vintage hit, “Black Velvet,” by Alannah Myles, of course, because of the doo-wop shuffle. Well, every blues song with this particular meter does, because that hard-rock banger was such a big hit when I was a teenager. So, while this song is not exactly such an instant killer, I have found myself listening to the song repeatedly in the last couple of days. I guess that’s the thing with blues – typically, it’s not revolutionary, not in the slightest, but there’s something that lures one to come back to it again and again. Joe Bonamassa is no doubt a musician worthy of a place in the Mount Rushmore of great blues titans, and his new album speaks with the accent of true blues authority and certitude.
Written by Jani Lehtinen
Tracklist
- Breakthrough
- Trigger Finger
- I’ll Take the Blame
- Drive by the Exit Sign
- Broken Record
- Shake This Ground
- Still Walking With Me
- Life After Dark
- You Don’t Owe Me
- Pain’s On Me
Lineup
Joe Bonamassa – vocals, guitars
Label
Provogue Records / J&R Adventures
