Artist: Popa Chubby
Album: Popa Chubby Prime Cuts: The Very Best of the Beast from the East
Label: PCP Productions
Release Date: 11.13.2018
This is a glorious release from a music giant who never fails to deliver interesting, gripping and, at times, downright excellent albums. Here we have a look back, a retrospective 15-track release, grabbing snatches from his back catalogue, and including some genuine delights that might surprise some and perplex others. Chubby’s guitar picking is generally neat, focused and easily enjoyable while his vocal reach is surprisingly strong. With Prime Cuts he has hand-picked an anthology that includes more than a few of his own personal and live-act fan favourites such as “Sweet Goddess of Love and Beer” and “Life Is a Beatdown”’ followed up by a commanding, great cover of the ever-popular, often covered “Hey Joe,” here given a Popa-Chubby makeover that sure zings and roars. Chubby is more than just another guitar-toting, singer-songwriter, as this album clearly highlights.
With Prime Cuts, he makes his mark as a masterful interpreter of tracks that are now rightly considered to be nothing short of modern classics: top among those included here must surely be his take on Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” hardly a song to expect from the swirling enormity of Chubby’s musical persona, but delivered here with nothing short of breathtaking musical genius. Anyone with even a passing interest in this guy should go out and snag a copy of this release. It rocks, and more.
—Iain Patience
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