SEAN COSTELLO Source: Blues and Rhythm Magazine Date: 06/2008 Writer: Phil Wight

I reviewed Sean Costello’s debut CD, ‘Call The Cops’, back in 1996 and was very impressed by this first effort from the then seventeen-year old guitarist. Sean went on to join Susan Tedeschi’s band and made his name as one of the Brat Pack of young blues guitarists around in the ‘90s. And now in B&R 230 we printed his obituary, Sean was found dead in an Atlanta hotel room, one day short of his twenty- ninth birthday.

This, his first (and now sadly last) release for Delta Groove opens with ‘We Can Get Together’, with its hard hitting, lumpy rhythm, and a choppy guitar solo Costello lays down the blueprint for what’s to follow. ‘Same Old Game’ is a funked up blues rocker with a solid drumbeat from stickman Paul Campanella. Sean conjures up the spirit of the late, great Eddie Hinton on ‘Can’t Let Go’, a perfect slab of blue-eyed soul.

‘Told Me A Lie’ utilises tuba and backing voices to good effect on a gospellish blues dirge. ‘How In The Devil’ is 1950s Memphis meets blues-rock with a spiky rhythmic riff and brace of super solos from Costello. ‘Have You No Shame’ is a blues weeper, a slowie on the theme of betrayed love. ‘Going Home’ has to be one of the most prophetic songs I’ve heard in many a year: ‘Soon I will be done with
the troubles of this world, I’m going home to live with God’. And tragically all too soon it was to come to pass.

‘Feel Like I Ain't Got A Home’ tells a story of wanting to slow down and settle down, and is the rockiest track on the CD and doesn’t really work for me. The traditional song, ‘Little Birds’, with its dreamy waltz like rhythm featuring slide guitar is the closer.

Definitely not an album for the blues traditionalists, however ‘We Can Get Together ‘ is well worth investigating if your palate is a tad jaded. Sean Costello, we’ll miss you.