On '24 Hours', you can hear the sweat
roll off Christine Santelli's brow

How does a nice Italian girl sweat so much damn blues and soul and gritty need so that when you open her CD she practically bites off your fingers before you even get it in the player? Christine Santelli possesses power and menace the likes of which haven't been seen or heard since Terry and The Healing Power graced the stage. Her independently produced CD, "24 Hours" (Rapid Records, 1993, also on cassette) delivers all that was promised in a February profile in the Hudson Current following a two-week engagement in Paris. Be nice to her now - the woman's about to soar career-wise.

 The two-year-old release contains mostly original material by Santelli and drummer Matt Mousseau, with mighty contributions by keyboardist Mike Lattrell, guitarist/dobro/harmonica player Hugh Pool and bassist Paul Daiter. "Christine & The Dickens" is what appears on the CD/cassette, although the group has since changed it's name to "The Christine Santelli Band". Opening with a traditional blues, "Been Down", Santelli, 27, displays a nasally, throaty growl over jazz/boogie keyboards and Pool's pyramiding dobro. "Since I Moved to Georgia" showcases Lattrell on smokey mandolin as Santelli sings "Sitting in my kitchen making my sweet Georgia peach pie/ Shopping at the grocery store/Smile across my head", so damn happy that her baby's back.

 Another Santelli original, "Stealin' My Heart", opens with Pool's squealing harmonica and lyrics about a dog running away to New Orleans, that invokes- despite Santelli's upstate New York background- a hazy, rural southern aroma. Santelli's "You Wonder Why" is a seething, slow blues, boozy and bitchy and pissed off. "It ain't the money you stole/Ain't the times you cheated/No matter what the weatherman say/ You get out and rain all over my day" You can almost sense this woman's frustration, cigarette in one hand, Red Dog in the other. Mousseau's "Groove Up" features his steady percussion and Pool's spinal-tapped harmonica.

 Santelli and Mousseau are also live-ins, and on "Move You" she offers her most sensual interpretation of his lyrics: "I can move you all night long/And if I can move you baby, I can never do you wrong". Pool's dobro stings and Lattrell's keys smack you upside the head, while Santelli's lower register could give goose bumps to a squid. "Don't need nobody to show me around" insists, and I concur.

 "My My" (no comma) is a quietly opening, insistent litany of needs that gets naslier as it pounds along, driven my Mousseau's beat. "My coffee cup needs a drink/My heart has fallen down/My soul has left the ground". Mix Janis with Aretha and a dab of Tracy Nelson and you begin to get an idea of what we're dealing with here. "Save Your Baby" is a moody reverie, a rainy Sunday night in the corner of a seedy bar, alone and with a buzz that borders on a headache. Lattrell's arpeggios are musical body paint. You can breathe the mist of sadness in Santelli's voice. Belly up and order another. Last call came and went years ago. "Got me soap and water" Santelli sings, but somehow it don't seem nearly enough just to wash off this kind of encrusted blues. My my.

 By Joe Del Priore
Reporter correspondent

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