Released – 2023

It’s rare to achieve intimacy and connect with a roomful of strangers, but this is what Kyla Brox achieves with Live at Köniz Castle, recorded at the Kulturhof in the grounds of Köniz Castle, Switzerland, on March 25 2023.

Kyla is the youngest daughter of legendary bluesman Victor Brox, as fondly remembered in the autobiographical ‘Bluesman’s Child’, with its heartfelt, “Two in the morning, still on stage / No chance of school next day…”

Her music is predicated on the notion that blues and soul are indistinguishable forms, and lashes the force of Afro-American music with a distinct Lancashire sensibility. To hear the singer in full flight is to be convinced that Kyla Brox is the greatest soul singer Britain has yet produced.

A ratio of two covers to 14 originals seems about right. The originals draw on Kyla’s consummate skills in role-play and imaginative empathy. Some of her songs are touched by lived experience, and are inspired by people she has known and loved. The immortal ‘Bluesman’s Child’ fits this category. Of the covers, Kyla’s classic interpretation of ‘Hallelujah’ blows every other version out of the water. No really. Listen and you’ll find that it’s an objective fact.

A road-tested four-piece with the standard singer plus guitar, bass and drum line-up departs from blues rock conventions whenever Kyla tootles her flute, a sound which summons back to African atavism. Connoisseurs of blues guitar may wish to note Paul Farr’s capacity to channel the expressive force of the immortals Peter Green and Jimi Hendrix, and his ability to shadow Kyla’s voice. Drummer Mark Warburton and bassist Danny Blomeley calibrate the pitch of intensity in perfect unity, whether holding back or surging forth.

Taken as a whole, Kyla and crew achieve a perfect balance between sensitivity and ferocity.

Released – 2016

Throw Away Your Blues, their sixth studio album and first in seven years, teaches important lessons about the demands of the busy workday, the lack of time in the modern world, the pull of home vs the call of the road, and how to keep it real with good humour and lots of heart. With all the songs generated by Brox, Blomeley and guitarist Paul Farr, Throw Away Your Blues is warm, soul-stirring and life-affirming. Kyla Brox is a temptress, diva, tear provoker and indisputably the most consummate blues singer of her generation.

Recorded at the incredible Kisjes studio in Dalfsen, Netherlands.

Released – 2009

Kyla and Danny in a stripped-down duo setting. Goose-pimples are aroused on the first track, All Breaking Down, and then recur with uncommon frequency. Kyla’s torchy vocals and Clive Mellor’s harmonica on Since I Fell For You, the token blues standard, accentuate the four-in-the-morning feeling.

Elsewhere, the spartan, exquisite atmosphere is the pretext for a high level of creativity. Danny’s acoustic guitar is by turns gentle and unrestrained, always inventive, whilst Kyla has never sounded more alluring. The blues quota is satisfied with Get Ready and Shaken & Stirred, executed with ripe self-confidence, but songs like Kasbah and Like The Sky link directly back to that gorgeous first acoustic album, Window, but have the patina of experience (and, it must be admitted, superior technical resources).

Rest Assured is deeply felt, with a gravity that goes beyond the youthful ardour of Window. Feel My Pain is reprised with fingerpicking urgency. And here’s an answer song: “Remember when you said you’d be my sunshine / And I cried / Because I thought it would never be my time / Well I was wrong / You came through / And turned my grey sky blue.” Grey Sky Blue (the album) was recorded when Kyla was pregnant with Sadie. It has a valedictory quality, and is simultaneously a summation and a fresh start.

Released – 2006

This realises the promise of Window by adding an extra ingredient: the groove. it’s a groove that comes from constant work with an active working band. Saxophonist Tony Marshall and Marshall Gill, a guitarist from the BB King school of searing sweetness, fulfil most of the solo honours.

Bassist Danny Blomeley and drummer Phil Considine are veterans of Victor’s ‘child slavery band’. And what a tight unit they are, personally and musically (groove triumphs over song on Won’t Fit There). Twelve out of the 14 selections are Kyla co-writes or originate from within the Brox circle (Victor is responsible for Working On Your Love; incidentally, brother Sam is producer).

Coming Home displays an empathetic Kyla, working out the work/life balance (She Knows) or her issues of self-doubt (Things I’d Change, Guilty), but also a tougher Kyla. This means that all the raunch is concentrated in one song, Do I Move You (a smouldering Nina Simone number), which actually intensifies the impact. The other cover, Don’t Change Horses, is a real find.

Rescued from the back-catalogue of seventies West Coast funksters Tower of Power, the song is a certified show-stopper, mixing real emotion (a plea for a second chance) with outrageous showmanship (“Giddy up, hi ho Silver…”).

And, with the Blomeley/Considine rhythm team piling on the coal, it builds up a fine head of steam. If Don’t Change Horses represents the zenith of the Kyla Brox Band, then Working On Your Love demonstrates the latent strength of the Kyla Brox Duo, with Kyla and Danny giving an object lesson in how less is more.