Sometimes, I’ll get an e-mail or a phone call from one of my
\npublicist friends, wondering why it’s taken me so long to get to a
\nparticular disc. Sometimes, it’s that I get so swamped that I can’t
\nbump that disc any higher up the ladder without pissing someone
\nelse off. Other times, when I do listen to the disc, I find myself
\nthinking that I missed something important… so I go back and keep
\nlistening to it until I find what I didn’t hear before, or at least
\nexplain what was missing in the first place.<\/p>\n
Case in point. I have spent the better part of a month listening
\nto
\nMake It Rain<\/i>, the sophomore album (and first release on
\nAlligator) from blues guitarist\/singer Michael Burks. And for some
\nreason, I just don’t see myself getting excited by this
\nrelease.<\/p>\n
Oh, it’s not that Burks is a subpar guitarist or vocalist; he
\nproves throughout the 12 tracks on this disc he can hold his own
\nwell. But there is something lacking in this recording – namely,
\nraw emotion – that keeps the album from becoming anything
\nspecial.<\/p>\n
Burks does try to keep the listener on their toes by kicking
\nthings off with an eclectic rhythm pattern to “Hit The Ground
\nRunning”… if only the album did just that. This is an early
\nwarning sign for
\nMake It Rain<\/i>, suggesting that Burks was going through the
\nmotions on this one.<\/p>\n
And it’s not that Burks can’t pull a stellar performance out of
\nhis hat. Tracks like “Everybody’s Got Their Hand Out,” “Thank God
\nFor Fools” and “Voodoo Spell” all show the potential that Burks –
\nand this disc – have. But these moments don’t come often enough to
\nsave things in the long run.<\/p>\n
I don’t doubt that Burks has the power in him to turn in a
\nperformance that would make the paint peel. It could well be that
\nBurks’s power comes out in the live show, and any studio recording
\njust doesn’t do him justice. (I haven’t seen Burks in concert, so I
\ncan’t vouch for this.) But
\nMake It Rain<\/i>, while having its moments, isn’t the best
\nvehicle for Burks’s talents. If you’re looking for the must-have
\nblues disc for this year,
\nMake It Rain<\/i> sometimes feels like you’re crossing the desert
\nwith an empty canteen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6602],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-37090","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-michael-burks","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37090"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37090"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}