Dom Martin
By Mike O’Cull
Award-winning Irish blues guitarist and vocalist Dom Martin comes across like a legend in the making on his new sophomore album A Savage Life. Scheduled for lift-off on April 8th, 2022, the record is an outstanding effort that explores the intersection of blues, rock, and singer-songwriter styles and shows how much creative power resides there.
Martin is a standout guitarist on both electric and acoustic and can craft a pretty mean set of lyrics, too, which makes A Savage Life compelling and inspiring from end to end. The set was produced by the Grammy-nominated Chris O’Brien and was tracked in Belfast and Dublin in the latter part of last year. Many fans consider Martin to be the finest Irish blues player since Rory Gallagher, which is high praise, indeed, and the might of the tracks on this new release will do little to dissuade them.
Martin has been building a solid reputation for himself since his first four-song EP Easy Way Out emerged in 2018. He’s maintained a steady upwards trajectory that has already seen him win the prestigious Acoustic Blues Act of The Year at the UK Blues Awards twice and be nominated for Blues Instrumentalist of The Year and Emerging Artist of The Year. Not surprisingly, Dom has five nominations for 2022.
He made an immediate splash in the UK blues scene and with BBC Radio Presenter Cerys Matthews, who played his music on BBC Radio 6’s Big Weekend Show and invited him for a live BBC Radio 2 Blues Show session in London. Martin has toured the UK, Russia, and Europe and will be the UK’s representative at The International Blues Challenge in Memphis, Tennessee in May of this year. His future is looking so bright that we may all need to wear shades.
Martin starts A Savage Life with slow, heavy, and fuzzed-out bliss of “Unsatisfied.” His guitar tone sings and his vocals grind heartbreak into gravel just as the best blues singers have always done. Martin’s rhythm section of Dave Thompson (bass) and
Laurence McKeown (drums) backs him in a way that keeps the musical conversation between guitar and groove going without ever losing focus. You’ll snap your neck turning around when this one roars out of your speakers. Believe.
Martin gets quiet on the next cut “Here Comes The River.” He sings the blues of despair with the emotion of one who knows the feeling well and does it with nothing but his guitar, voice, and a Boss RC300 looper pedal. The entire song is delivered at the level of a whisper and that softness adds much to the depth of it. It hits like a friend telling you hard truths at 4 AM and all you can do is listen.
“The Man From Nowhere” is an old-time solo fingerstyle blues tune done with a resonator tone and the appropriate background noise that completes the 78 RPM experience. Martin’s chops and feel are beyond reproach. He plays it fast, loose, and razor-sharp at the same time and takes us directly back to the early days of blues music. If you live for the old ways, this one’s got your name on it.
The strutting “12 Gauge” is a super-sized blast of classic power trio blues/rock that kicks like a young Billy Gibbons. Bold and brash, it has that wonderfully-underproduced live sound we all love and Martin digs into it with everything he and his band have got. His playing is ripping, captivating, and raw like sushi. A lot of players struggle to fill out the trio format but Martin rises to it and makes it fly. Other impressive moments on A Savage Life include “Addict” and “The Parting Glass,” a traditional Scottish lament that closes the album. One spin of this new set and it’s obvious that Dom Martin is the next rising star in the global roots scene. Jump aboard now before he passes you by.
Pre-order link for A Savage Life by Dom Martin
Watch “12 Gauge”
Dom Martin website
New to me. Thanks for the interesting article. Love the vocals and guitar. Excellent video!
Great review.
Have caught a couple of Dom Martin gigs with his band (at the pre-lockdown ‘Blues on the Bay’ festival, and more recently in Belfast) but two Fridays ago had the pleasure of a solo gig in Warrenpoint. Many of the crowd were out for an evening meal and hadn’t a clue what they were about to experience. At the end of the evening you could have heard the proverbial pin dropping. Amazing stuff.