ERIC BELL (Thin Lizzy) – Exile (2016)

Northern Irish rock musician and guitarist ERIC BELL, best known as a founding member and the original guitarist of legendary group Thin Lizzy has just released a new studio album, “Exile“, including the track ‘Song For Gary’, a soulful dedication to his former bandmate, the great Gary Moore.

When you’ve co-founded one of the most relevant bands in Rock history, written one of the best-loved guitar riffs of all time and had the British Prime Minister claim he listens to your songs when he ‘needs a lift’ (which, let’s face it, must be quite often), it would be easy to put your feet up, sit back and bask in the glory of a successful career in music.
Or you could just keep on working like Bell, who is releasing his first studio album in more than six years.

The word legend is one which is often, and even more frequently inappropriately, bandied about. But, it is a description which definitely does apply to one man: this guitar player from the humble back streets of East Belfast whose name is cemented in the mythos of the Irish, and subsequently the international, rock scene.
And that is Mr Eric Bell. One of the founding members of Thin Lizzy. In fact, perhaps the driving force behind the formation of that iconic act.

It has been almost 50 years from those heady days of smoky Dublin bars, and Bell’s subsequent departure from the band just as they found themselves on the cusp of stardom. The intervening decades have not necessarily been kind to Bell, who often found himself forced to eek out an existence based on the legacy of the band he founded rather than as a highly talented musician in his own right.
An existence which found himself an exile in his own land: a situation which inspired,
this latest album – hence its title.

Like his fellow Belfast native, the late Gary Moore, Bell has returned to the blues in the latter half of his career, and “Exile” is an album which is very much steeped in Northern Ireland’s own distinctive twist on the artform, combining the blues itself with elements of traditional folk, acoustic and the show-band era in which musicians such as Bell and Moore, as well as contemporaries such as Lynottt, Rory Gallagher and even old grumpy himself, Van Morrison, forged and moulded their sounds.
It’s an album drawn from the deepest heartwell of personal experience, drawing on same in a way which is not only both introspective and retrospective but also grateful that its creator finds himself in the position of being able to continue to express himself in the only way he knows.
‘Deep In Your Heart’ sets the mellow tone, with it’s slow slide syncopation, while ‘Don’t Love Me No More’ has a funky vibe which accentuates the underlying heartbreak of the song’s melody.

Then arrives ‘Gotta Say Bye Bye’, which truly evokes Lizzy’s bluesier roots, with its beautifully punctuated chorus and subtle vibrato and understated background solo. This song along worth this disc… the emotion, authenticity coming from Bell’s Stratocaster sound send chills to your spine. This is how electric guitar should be played… from the heart.
‘Vote For me’ sees Bell deliver some typical Irish sarcasm, with its ironic yet damning lyric and complementary acidic yet genteel riff. The title track is a laconic lament, drawing on the Irish sense of wanderlust and exploration but the innate regret of doing so and the longing for the comfort of the home soil, coupled with the sense of loss when you do just that: the prodigal son returning to find himself an outsider in his own place.

‘Rip It Up’ heralds the album’s briefly faster interlude, and is good old-fashioned rock ‘n’ roller of the kind that used to get the guys and gals meeting in the middle of the dancehall floor back in those showband days which Bell evokes so well, especially in his cheeky vocal and rambunctious guitar workout, while ‘Concrete Jungle’ is a funky little bruiser.
‘Thank God’ harks back to the time of his departure from Thin Lizzy, expressing a gratitude that he jumped off the rock ‘n’ roll rollercoaster when he did.

Closer ‘Song For Gary’ is another highlight. It winds the clock even further back: it’s a melancholic, morose, almost totally spoken word homage, recalling the first time that he met Moore, when the latter was just 11 years of age, yet understatedly elegiac and mournfully celebratory of his fellow Belfastian’s sublime talent. The guitar solo is out of this world, in a true Gary Moore style.

“Exile” is a superb Rock album, a ‘true’ Rock album. It is a record which expresses regret and longing, thankfulness and forgiveness. It is beautiful in every respect: its lyricism, its atmosphere, its musicality.
It’s an album delivered straight from the heart of a musician and songwriter who has experienced every aspect of every emotion which he expresses. It’s an album best listened to late at night, with the lights turned down very low, a glass of fine wine in one hand and the person you love nestling in the crook of your other arm. Go do it.
Excellent.

01 – Deep In Your Heart
03 – Don’t Love Me No More
03 – Gotta Say Bye Bye
04 – Vote For Me
05 – Exile
06 – Little Boy Running
07 – Rip It Up
08 – Concrete Jungle
09 – Thank God
10 – Song For Gary

BUY IT !
www.amazon.co.uk/Exile-Eric-Bell/dp/B01ATMME0C
.