Anyone who knows a little bit about the history of music will be well aware of the role that blues music has played in influencing the contemporary pop and rock sound. Those simple 12-bar progressions can be heard in the music of everyone from Led Zeppelin to The Beatles, who in turn would, to a large extent, define the parameters of what both those genres could be.
But if you would rather have a sonic explanation than a history lesson, you could do much worse than give “December Blues” a spin, the new single from Mirrors on the Moon.
A song built on a soulful take of the classic blues sound, it echoes everything I have said above, not least Zep at their most rootsy and The Fab Four at their more retrospective. But Mirrors on the Moon are not ones for looking back, even when exploring such hallowed musical grounds, and so they are able to give even this established form a thoroughly modern sound.
They do this not by eschewing what makes blues so great but by adding to it. Sure, it runs on a wilfully relaxed groove, uses the drums to build sonic anticipation, and follows that trademark structure, but they also swathe the song in sumptuous backing vocals and washes of Rhodes organ.
“December Blues” is less “woke up this morning” but more “stayed up all night and drank the winter blues away, and then poured all of those experiences into a song”. A flippin’ great song, one that shows that there is no need to go inventing new genres and trying to build new musical styles; there is plenty of life in the existing forms, even one as long established as blues.
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