Pioneer of the guitar on the internet, Anglo-French fretwoman Laura has led the way for many young guitarists and is now at the forefront of the current landscape of guitarists in France and beyond. With bedroom recordings of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama and the like, in 2008 Laura embarked on her journey as a guitar prodigy on YouTube, where she captivated millions of people with her fiery classic rock covers and blues-infused solos. Her talent and charisma quickly propelled her from viral sensation to a celebrated figure in the rock scene, earning widespread acclaim for her raw, retro-inspired sound.
Laura is exactly what she promises to be: a badass rock’n’roll woman who makes her guitar produce sounds that are about to shake the world in a ground-breaking fashion. Her 2023 album Head Above Water received praise for its classic-meets-modern rock fusion and she is highly regarded as the rising female rock artist in Europe.
As a multi-instrumentalist, Laura is one of the few artists who managed to break out of the “virtual” bubble and bring her musical highlighted life with her own band: After two albums released in 2017 and 2019 (Verycords/Warner) and having played the biggest, most prominent stages for rock music in France (Hellfest, Download Festival, Guitare en Scène, etc.), Laura Cox released her third studio album Head Above Water, which highlighted a more personal take and a solid grasp on all things rock. This album saw Laura re-inventing herself while revealing new facets of her musical talent. Recorded at the renowned ICP studios in Brussels, and mastered by Ted Jensen (The Eagles, The Rolling Stones, etc.), Head Above Water rocked the boat. In her riffs and solos, Laura masters both flow and precision and her playing clearly shows that this woman knows how to take a guitar apart. Blending classic rock with bluegrass elements in an unparalleled ease, Laura Cox once again illustrates that she will remain a driving force in a new generation of rock guitarists in the years to come.
Now, with the release of her new album Trouble Coming, the best can now be revealed! On this song-set, she strips things back to reveal a more introspective, soulful side without losing the edge that made her stand out in the first place. Recorded at ICP Studios in Brussels, the album features 11 fresh tracks, mixed and engineered by Jean-Marc Pelatan at Studio des Muses, with tracks mastered by multi-GRAMMY award-winning Ted Jensen.
The album opens with No Need to Try Harder, a blues-infused rocker of perhaps a self-analysis tale of getting famous, this has a whole heap of radio-friendly chorus lines, not to mention some really tasty syncopation towards the end. See the video below to catch the flavour. It’s followed by A Way Home, and you begin to get the gist of Laura’s trademark highly catchy, modern take on blues-rock – simple enough in arrangement but so, so addictive, a real ear-worm. Topped with a brief but blistering solo in the middle section, this is seriously good stuff.
Next up is the title track, another single featuring hugely melodic vocals, and Laura’s favourite slightly fuzzed guitar lines. Half narrated, half sung, and always driven by that insidious guitar line, I’m completely hooked by this tune. Inside the Storm is another deceptively simple arrangement, vocals and mesmeric guitar line choogling along insistently before a whopper of a solo chops its way across the beat, a song of encouragement and redemption.
What Do You Know? is a slower starter, semi-acoustic again with that semi-spoken vocal style. A more “pure Blues” number yet still sounding fresh as a daisy. Laura has this knack of picking a simple, repetitive guitar line with such a warm tone that it’s straightaway inside your head, despite the relative darkness of the lyrics. Dancing Around the Truth feels like another venting of phobias, I hope Laura feels upbeat about getting some of these thoughts out of her head and into the world! Musically it’s familiar territory, the throbbing guitar line underpinned by a simple rhythm, with tuneful vocals floating above the whole. I’m suddenly reminded of Patti Rothberg’s similarly tasty one-woman performance on her Between The 1 And The 9 album?
Out Of The Blue sounds more Country, almost blue-grass to start with, this is an old-fashioned ballad at heart that exudes optimism for changes in one’s life. Some beautifully gentle lead notes towards the end capture the vibe perfectly. The Broken ramps up the pace considerably, it’s the obvious forthcoming single that features some stellar solo work on top of what could be described as a punchy pub-rock track. Reminds me of dark, sweaty, venues around London in the 70’s and 80’s, and the lyrics have that same devil-take-the-hindmost vibe.
Rise Together gets back to a full-blown Blues mood, a tale of the sheer joy of being an (aspiring and then successful) musician- long may it continue! Do I Have Your Attention? continues the same kind of up-beat rock of The Broken, the trademark choogling guitar line and big chorus working together. Really nice solo here, just not long enough! Strangers Someday brings the song-set to a close, another simple repetitive guitar line with an added big fuzzed / synth sound added in – not sure how much of this is guitar, how much might be synth – but it works really well, that morphing between clean pure notes and the fatter sound in the choruses.
I do like this album. It has limitations in the arrangements because it feels like she’s played all the instruments herself – so for me, there is a slight lack of light and shade in the compositions – her trademark metronomic “choogling” guitar lines can get a bit samey throughout the course of a full-length album. I’d love to hear Laura expand her style within a four-piece band, I’m pretty sure that would be really something!
The album is available as CD Digipak, 180g gatefold black vinyl, limited edition marbled white and black vinyl, and limited edition marbled transparent red and black vinyl.
