Gianni Tbay is The Blues Against Youth and he’s on a - more or less – one man mission to put the country blues in a small package and deliver it out to as many people as possible. You’ve got to have the honesty in your soul to do something like that and “Trapped in The Country” displays nothing if not that very honesty.
When you’re doing most everything yourself, there are not a lot of places that you can hide and precious few opportunities to pass the blame. So when “It’s Been A Long Time Mama” and “The Man Who Feels Trapped” strut by, you know that the attitude is that of the man himself. Of course, the one man band approach is hardly new – the downright quirky Dad Horse Experience comes to mind – but The Blues Against The Youth isn’t about ploughing a new furrow or shining a light into the darkness. The Blue Against Youth’s raison d’être is to distil the essence of the past into something once more pure and while the sound might well be dirty, the concept is as pure as the driven snow all the way through these twelve tracks.
So whilst this is in many ways a one note – and twelve bars - album, “Trapped In The Country” still makes a refreshing change from the polished until the shine hides the lack of content bands that have caught the blues in the endless loop of festivals.