Parish Hall - Parish Hall (50th Anniversary)

Parish Hall's self-titled debut has spent five decades as blues rock's best kept secret, and this 50th anniversary reissue, all-analog mastered by Kevin Gray, finally gives it the pressing it deserved.

Fantasy Records put the record out in 1970, right as the blues rock explosion kicked off by Cream and Free was hitting full stride, and Parish Hall came at it as a lean three piece: Gary Wagner on guitar, piano, and lead vocals, John Haden on bass, Steve Adams on drums, with Ray Shanklin producing. They made exactly one album together before vanishing, the kind of one-and-done that usually means a band cared more about the groove than the career, and left behind something tighter and grittier than most of what actually charted that year.

My Eyes Are Getting Heavy opens the record on a slow, heavy-lidded blues riff that never quite wakes up, Dynaflow is the record's muscle car of a track, all low gear torque and Wagner's guitar redlining, and Somebody Got the Blues does exactly what it says, sung like a man who has personally checked. Silver Ghost slows things back down into something closer to a dirge, proof this trio could brood as well as they could burn.

Fifty years later, this reissue finally lets that muscle show up the way it always should have.