Patrick Sweany, Daytime Turned To Nighttime - album review: A warm, engaging collection

Download: First Of The Week; Tiger Pride; Long Way Down; Back Home

Country bluesman Patrick Sweany admits listening to Bobbie Gentry, Lee Dorsey and Bobby Charles as he wrote this album, and the evidence is plain throughout Daytime Turned To Nighttime, which mixes febrile Louisiana with conversational intimacy.

His laid-back drawl and elegant slivers of slide-guitar evoke the jobbing musician’s road-weariness in “First Of The Week”, before the liquid funk shuffle “Tiger Pride” restores belief in his chosen profession. “Back Home” is a raw blues holler in the manner of Sweany’s earlier albums, but his deft fingerpicking skills are best displayed on “Long Way Down”, a song about the newly homeless living in cars.

His neat fretwork lends a flavour of JJ Cale, and “Sweethearts Together” suggests how Roy Orbison might have sounded had he been backed by the Cowboy Junkies. A warm, engaging collection.