Album Review: Vineet – Delta Blues Revival

From an unexpected corner comes a new album steeped in the authentic musical flavor of the Mississippi Delta. Vineet Singh Hukmani is an Indian singer and songwriter, born in Noida, India, schooled in Bangalore and an alumnus of Harvard Business School. Founder and CEO of his native country’s Radio One, he seems to have launched his musical career in 2020; detailed background information about the artist is difficult to come by.

According to the Times of India, Vineet scored a notable achievement when he placed nine singles in the number one spot on the European Indie Top 100 chart in 2021, the first-ever artist to do so. In 2023 he released a multimedia (“multiverse” in his parlance) work called Nine. More recently, a cover of Michael Jackson’s 1983 hit “Billie Jean” imbued the tune with Indian textures – sitar, tabla and the like – and even with its Autotune processing, it’s quite effective overall. Vineet has also recorded a “trad jazz” (aka Dixieland) album.

None of the above has anything remotely to do with Delta blues, making the recent appearance of Delta Blues Revival all that much more of an out-of-left-field surprise. What’s even more unexpected is just how fine a collection it is.

As unlikely as the story of Vineet’s journey to the blues might be, it seems – based on a brief one-sheet accompanying the digital release – to have come down to a screening of the film Sinners. Inspired by the music in that movie, he reached out to Jackson, Mississippi blues guitarist Ruffus Cotton, suggesting they collaborate. This they did, working with a purely analog recording setup and using only original songs composed and sung by Vineet.

Perhaps the best way to approach Delta Blues Revival – at least on first listen – is to forget the backstory and immerse oneself in the music. Vineet’s powerful and expressive (yet smooth and controlled) vocals share the sonic spotlight with Cotton’s assured acoustic guitar work. Save for the tiniest bit of overdubbed backing vocals – so fleeting one might miss them – the album is built on nothing more than a voice and a guitar (and occasional harmonica).

And in the end, nothing more is needed. There’s a unity of tone, texture and purpose on the album. The mood varies from track to track. Nowhere does anything surface that suggests that the album was made by an artist from outside the United States, much less one from the other side of the planet.

Vineet’s cinematic inspiration gets a nod on “Sinner’s Gone.” Elsewhere, the titles hint at the content: “Blues for You,” “I Made a Choice,” “Tricked Me Again,” “Old Men Fighting” and so on. Story songs all, eschewing lyrical specificity in favor of a universal approach designed to resonate with a wide range of listeners.

Easily the most unanticipated release in recent times, Delta Blues Revival is in fact part of a double album. Though not available for review here, its companion collection is Kyon? Punjabi Blues. Almost certainly drawn from the same sessions, it’s sung completely in Vineet’s native language, with vocal processing more in line with his pop releases. Odd to be sure, but this artist’s previous work and Punjabi-language release should not discourage listeners from checking out what’s a quite remarkable and – again, surprisingly – enjoyable set of songs.