"As striking a musical reinvention as you're likely to witness this year."
- Barry Nicholson, News Of The World
The real Sandi Thom has stepped forward, and surely no one has ever been quite so happy to get the blues.
On June 7, a new Sandi emerged with ‘Merchants and Thieves,’ an album that brilliantly reflects how she’s opened up a whole new channel for her creativity. Retaining her innate feeling for a powerful melody and a trenchant lyric, the record adds the new blues sensibility that visitors to her famously powerful gigs have sensed for themselves in recent months.
Thom was encouraged to bring her long-held love of such heritage music to the fore, and her respect for such guitar giants as Peter Green, as fate called for her to sit in as vocalist with Joe Bonamassa, when the modern-day blues titan lost his voice. There’s no better endorsement than his presence on the album as both singer and guitarist on the album’s lead track, ‘This Ol’ World.’ Sandi calls it a “watershed moment,” and it’s as lithe and lively a piece of contemporary blues as you’ll hear all year.
“When I did Joe’s dates, the reaction at first was like ‘What?’,” she remembers. “Then we got on stage and the reaction was brilliant. Now, the way that music’s turning, it’s so much about the touring, so I’m really excited about the world I’m entering. The cool thing I’ve found from entering this new world of the blues is that they’re the most dedicated fans I’ve ever come across, because they’re true music fans.”
The million-selling platinum-selling Scottish troubadour has long since proved the sheer power of her songwriting, with her album and single chart-topping adventures. Now, four years after her debut album ‘Smile...It Confuses People’ and the massive hit single ‘I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker’ both raced to the top of the UK charts on the way to combined sales of about 1.5 million worldwide, Sandi’s back with a fresh sound that reflects her real self, and she couldn’t be happier about it.