Album Review: Gary Moore, "After Hours"

Basking in the light of his previous album, GARY MOORE continues where he left off with his follow up work After Hours, once again returning to those roots which inspired him to play in the first place.

If you're looking for a dramatic change in musical direction then you're on the wrong boat with this one, but don't let that sound in any way negative since After Hours is arguably a definitive progression from Still Got the Blues. Moore displays more of a confidence with the medium, and has tastefully refined its elements to suit his style. And as such, each track has something to offer.

For those who like Gary's harder edge, there are still plenty of brash, brazen Blues belters to beat your brains into shape. Opener "Cold Day in Hell," which you've already probably heard, since it's the first single to be lifted from said platter, bites back with that Moore aggressiveness inherited from his heavy metal days. Besides which, you'll also find him in overdrive mode once again rubbing shoulders with the legendary likes of BB KING (on the magnetic "Since I Met You baby"), and ALBERT COLLINS on LITTLE MILTON's "The Blues is All Right."

Gary's unmistakable Les Paul's sound does seem most comfortable, though, on what I would consider the record's stand out tracks, namely "Separate Ways" and "Nothing's the Same," which appeal to my slushy, sentimental nature - that "Parisiene Walkways" type of thing, I love it!

Notably, his stab at penning his own blues tunes with more of a rock flavour to them, actually works. Besides the aforementioned "Cold Day..." Moore puts down his cards on gems such as "Story of the Blues," "Only Fool in Town," and "The Hurt Inside," which sit admirably alongside remodelled versions of ALBERT KING's "Don't You Lie To Me (I get evil)," DUSTER BENNETT's "Jumping at Shadows" and JOHN MAYALL's "Key to Love."

By taking a refreshing step back into the past it appears that Gary Moore has at least found his niche after tampering with every other musical form under the sun. "The Blues is back and it's here to stay," croons the Irish guitarist on the "Blues is Alright." In these recessionary times, I couldn't agree with him more!

Grade A

Mark Crampton
Riff Raff
April 1992

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!