From the seven-minute opening force of nature \u201cSlow Train,\u201d Joe Bonamassa makes it clear that his tenth album will be perhaps his best yet.<\/p>\n
The song brings all that is good about the premier blues guitarist of the 2000s; a clever chug-chug drum intro recalling a train leaving the station gives into a smoky driving blues, accentuated by soulful guitar solos backed with Rick Melick\u2019s organ. Bonamassa has been playing a slightly lesser version of this sort of music for a decade now, but on \u201cSlow Train\u201d it feels vital, alive, gloriously out of step with what passes for music in 2011.<\/p>\n
The whole of Dust Bowl <\/i>builds upon last year\u2019s Black Rock <\/i>with increased emotion, a definite mood, and a hint of country influence, though nowhere near what the Woody Guthrie-inspired title might suggest. A hint of twang pops up between the words of the uniformly excellent title track, subtly enhancing Carmine Rojas\u2019 insistent bass and Bonamassa\u2019s vocals. The twang actually is provided by a series of Greek instruments (a \u201cslide bouzouki\u201d, for example), proof that the man is willing to experiment with his sound instead of falling back on clich\u00e9s.<\/p>\n
The Greek instruments appear again in the opening to \u201cBlack Lung Heartache;\u201d as Bonamassa recorded this in Santorini, his access to these instruments likely provided the inspiration to replace what would ordinarily be played by a banjo or mandolin. The song eventually gives way to a stomping bluesy rock number. The overall effect is a wonderful marriage of styles. <\/p>\n
Said marriage is less successful with the actual country tracks. John Hiatt appears on \u201cTennessee Plates\u201d and Vince Gill on \u201cSweet Rowena;\u201d both have a classicist country feel (think Waylon Jennings) that fans of the genre will appreciate, though others may find themselves skipping ahead. “Rowena” and “You Better Watch Yourself” find Bonamassa slumming in bar-band mode \u2013 not that this is a bad thing, as he and the band are clearly having a great time, but not up to the level of the better tracks here. These songs provide a relief from the more cinematic aspirations of songs like \u201cSlow Train\u201d and the cover of Free\u2019s \u201cHeartbreaker,\u201d the latter of which benefits from a guest vocal spot by Glenn Hughes and Melick\u2019s organ, which trades off with the guitar fills in the verses.<\/p>\n
All Bonamassa albums have a handful of slow blues numbers, and two of the three here are stunning. \u201cNo Love On The Street\u201d features perhaps the best solo on an album full of them, while the cover of \u201cPrisoner\u201d closes the album with an epic sweep that ties everything before that came together. This may sound like a criticism, but \u201cPrisoner\u201d sounds like a great lost Grand Funk Railroad track, along the lines of their epic \u201cLoneliness,\u201d albeit with more heat and heart and much better production.<\/p>\n
It wraps up an album that not only belongs on the year\u2019s best-of list but is among the Top 3 in Joe Bonamassa\u2019s catalog. By drawing on various strains of roots music without being a slave to any of them, Dust Bowl <\/i>is a modern blues-rock classic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":31149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7758],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-42839","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-joe-bonamassa","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42839","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\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42839"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}