magazine, Petit addressed the potential controversy involved with re-working seminal, "sacred" blues recordings: "These songs were dead.

The Crave was produced by Stephen Dale Petit and mixed by Jim Spencer (New Order, Johnny Marr, The Vaccines) and Ian Grimble (The Clash, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Manic Street Preachers).

Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood appears on album opener "3 Gunslingers" in the form of a pre-recorded answer phone message that features at the intro of the song, which was inspired by an evening in late 2009 which Petit spent with Wood and Eric Clapton driving around North London in Petit's car.

[2] In keeping with his long-standing and well-publicised mission to incite a "New Blues Revolution", Petit has stated that his primary goal with the album was to "explore different ways of approaching and presenting the blues",[3] and avoid re-creating stereotypes within the genre: "There are a lot of contemporary blues albums that adhere to predictable conventions: certain production values, arrangements, sonic cliches, stereotypical lyrical things and so on.

Speaking to Classic Rock magazine about the album's interpretation of Tupac Shakur's hip-hop classic "California Love", Petit said: "The hypnotic riff in California [Love] was sampled from a Joe Cocker song called 'Woman to Woman'.

Petit wanted to present the album in a way that was visually exciting, avoiding the usual presentation cliches associated with the blues genre: "I wanted to push boundaries and get up [blues] purist's noses because if purists have it their way, the music goes nowhere.

The album marked an expansion of critical recognition from blues-centric publications into the mainstream press for Petit and his music.

His playing is dynamite, his vocals are exultant… This is absolutely the most personal album that has been released this year and possibly the most important – simply brilliant.

The Sunday Mirror called Petit "a guitar sensation" [7] and Time Out London labelled him a "new blues revolutionary".