Jeff Beck\u2019s 2009 live album and DVD Live At Ronnie Scott\u2019s<\/i> suggested the guitar maestro, now in the fifth decade of a remarkable career, remained at the very top of his game.\u00a0 The passion and subtlety and creativity of his playing had never been greater. Still, the evidence was somewhat scarce; the deliberate Beck has produced just eight solo albums over the course of the past 30 years, while maintaining and even growing his reputation as one of the most talented guitarists alive and playing.\u00a0 In a virtual personal speed record, the very next year here comes Beck again, delivering the new studio album Emotion And Commotion<\/i>.<\/p>\n
As Beck has done often in recent years, here he mixes instrumental tunes with tunes where he is joined by a vocalist \u2013 though he blurs the boundary a bit by overgenerously listing Olivia Safe as featured vocalist on two tracks where she simply adds a few wordless vocal textures to tracks that are otherwise instrumentals.\u00a0 On this album, as on Live At Ronnie Scott\u2019s<\/i>, all of Beck\u2019s vocal accompanists are female; he\u2019s joined by Janis Joplin acolyte Joss Stone on two tracks, while the Jeff Buckley favorite \u201cLilac Wine\u201d is sung by Imelda May.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The other intriguing aspect of this album is the incorporation of an orchestra.\u00a0 We\u2019ve seen all sorts of rock and jazz artists try working with an orchestra over the years, often with mixed results.\u00a0 In Beck\u2019s hands, though, the experience becomes almost seamless, as his omnivorous musical tastes and world-class arranging sensibilities ensure the orchestra is incorporated only where it makes sense to do so, and expertly there.<\/p>\n
Once the music starts, you\u2019re immediately reminded that the thing Beck does better than just about anyone in the world is to pull an amazing range of tones out of his instrument.\u00a0 His opening instrumental take on another Jeff Buckley tune, \u201cCorpus Christi Carol,\u201d is really just a series of very gently, precisely played notes with a restrained, tasteful string section underneath, but the purity and expressiveness of the notes Beck coaxes out of his guitar is stunning.\u00a0 It feels like a sound painting, and a Monet or a Van Gogh at that.<\/p>\n
That supple overture fades right into \u201cHammerhead,\u201d which starts with Beck wrenching a dirty, dirty blues riff from the bowels of his instrument, making his axe virtually talk to you in low, guttural tones.\u00a0 For thirty seconds, at least — after that intro, the song explodes into a rampaging riff that\u2019s doubled and tripled by the orchestra and hits like a tidal wave.\u00a0 Then the strings fall back, leaving bass and drums to support Beck as he produces moaning, menacing tones in between the choruses, where the strings come back to hit full force again and again.\u00a0 The sounds he wrings out of his guitar on the solos are unbelievable; he creates incredible effects and wild little squeals, but he does it all with tremendous feel.\u00a0 He\u2019s not just a technician or a gymnast, he paints with his guitar, putting emotion and artistry into every sonic brushstroke.<\/p>\n
\u201cNever Alone\u201d is much more restrained, a very pretty mid-tempo tune in which Beck carves little sonic figures with his guitar.\u00a0 There\u2019s no orchestra but the track doesn\u2019t need anything more than what\u2019s there, which is also typical of Beck — he recognizes what a song needs and gives it nothing more or less.<\/p>\n
The latter trait is in evidence again when he takes on the iconic \u201cOver The Rainbow,\u201d presenting it with nothing but his guitar and strings providing a foundation behind him.\u00a0 Beck literally sings Judy Garland\u2019s vocals with his guitar \u2013 and it sounds incredible as he catches every nuance of Garland\u2019s original performance.\u00a0 Beck also comments in the liner notes about why Garland\u2019s rendition of the song was so compelling \u2013 her vibrato was actually unsteady, lending extra vulnerability and emotion to her performance.\u00a0 Mr. Beck can hold the notes just fine, but the subtlety and nuance and remarkable beauty of his performance of this song is something to behold.<\/p>\n
The remaining tracks are equally diverse choices.\u00a0 \u201cI Put A Spell On You\u201d is the classic Screamin\u2019 Jay Hawkins grinder with Joss Stone in full blues wail.\u00a0 It\u2019s well-performed but somewhat shocking in context, right after \u201cOver The Rainbow.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cLilac Wine\u201d is played as a nightclub jazz song, with vocals over orchestra for most of the track, though Beck comes through at the end to deliver a substantial and very tasteful, rather George Benson-esque solo.\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cSerene\u201d is what it says it is, much like \u201cNever Alone\u201d in the painterly quality of Beck\u2019s playing.<\/p>\n
\u201cNessun Dorma\u201d finds Beck\u2019s 360-degree musical interests in play again as he takes another vocal composition \u2013 this time from a Puccini opera \u2013 and substitutes his guitar for the vocal line, \u201csinging\u201d over the orchestra.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t call this one an unqualified success, but there are some undeniably gorgeous moments when he takes his guitar right up to the sky with the orchestra for the climactic notes.<\/p>\n
Just for the sake of contrast, next cut \u201cThere\u2019s No Other Me\u201d is a bluesy screamer with Joss Stone doing her grittiest wails while Beck again takes the path of restraint and tastefulness, conjuring spooky, otherworldly blues licks out of his guitar. Closer \u201cElegy For Dunkirk\u201d is fittingly elegiac, if rather subdued finish.<\/p>\n
It takes a musical mind with the ambition and ability of a Jeff Beck to put Jeff Buckley, Screamin\u2019 Jay Hawkins, Puccini, an orchestra, a jazz-rock band, and a belting blues vocalist in the same room and have the results sound, not like an utter mish-mash of clashing styles, but like a kaleidoscopic portrait of a musician in the absolute prime of his artistic life.\u00a0 Whatever it might lack in continuity or coherence, Emotion And Commotion<\/i> makes up for with sheer artistry and amazing, amazing musicianship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5952],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-41966","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-jeff-beck","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41966","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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41966"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41966"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}