
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Eric Clapton - Slowhand
After the guest-star-drenched No Reason to Cry failed to make
much of an impact commerically, Eric Clapton returned to using his own band for Slowhand. The difference is substantial -- where No Reason to Cry struggled hard to find the right tone, Slowhand opens with the relaxed, bluesy shuffle of J.J. Cale's "Cocaine" and sustains it throughout the course of the album. Alternating between straight blues ("Mean Old Frisco"), country ("Lay Down Sally"), mainstream rock ("Cocaine," "The Core"), and pop ("Wonderful Tonight"), Slowhand doesn't sound schizophrenic because of the band's grasp of the material. This is laid-back virtuosity -- although Clapton and his band are never flashy, their playing is masterful and assured. That assurance and the album's eclectic material make Slowhand rank with 461 Ocean Boulevard as Eric Clapton's best albums.

Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Popular Posts of the Week
-
14 Album: Boy October War Under a blood red sky The unforgettable fire Wide awake in America The Joshua tree Rattle and hum Achtu...
-
Biography: Best known for the shimmering "Under the Milky Way," their lone Top 40 hit, the Australian band the Church combined th...
-
A powerhouse record set full of what made the Doors important. Strong lyrics married to distinct musical passages; storytelling at its' ...
-
Tenacious D is the debut album of the comedy rock duo Jack Black and Kyle Gass. For their first album, they enlisted the help of drummer Da...
-
Produced by Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie (Radiohead, The Pixies, Hole) and recorded over several weeks at Allaire Studios (a converted tu...
-
The Jam spent much of the next two years touring. They were not very successful with their U.S. shows, for some of which they were the openi...
-
‘A weblog is a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML browser.’ ‘A f...
0 COMMENTS:
Post a Comment