You can’t keep a good man down, or so the saying goes, and Claude Diamond keeps looking upwards throughout his album “Trouble on Memory Lane”. Since he didn’t actually cut his first album until he had reached an age when most men give up on life and go to the golf course that approach might not be entirely unexpected nor, indeed, is the rich vein of sentimentality that he mines for lyrical inspiration.
Warmth is the key to Claude Diamond’s highway of songs and his rose tinted reflections of life have much to commend them with the wry humour of “Duct Tape World of Mine”, as an example, saying as much about the state of modern country music as it does about the man’s outlook on life. The blues is never far away though with both the downbeat “Pawn Shop Gold” and the upbeat “Blues Cadillac” providing some proof that he has sat at the end of more than twelve bars.
A distinctly likeable album, “Trouble on Memory Lane” shows that Claude Diamond, despite his high mileage, is still ready for the road.