This is probably the closest Joe Bonamassa will ever come to making a prog-rock record.<\/p>\n
The main entr\u00e9e is still blues rock, played very loud, with stellar guitar solos. No need to reinvent the wheel. But this time, Bonamassa \u2013 after an 18-month recording hiatus \u2013 entered a New York studio for 9 days to record a nine-song, 57-minute album that ever so slightly pushes his sound forward.<\/p>\n
Most of the songs hit between the six- and seven-minute mark, but conversely Bonamassa scaled back his usual guitar\/pedal arsenal this time around, hitting the listener instead with more epic song structures and more worldly influences. It\u2019s quite a different approach from Royal Tea <\/i>or Redemption<\/i>, and is the better for it. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Loyal Kind\u201d has a folkish intro and penny-whistle theme that runs through it, interspersed with a hard-rocking verse and confident chorus (backing vocalists Mahalia Barnes and Juanita Tippins are crucial to this album). The song came from the Royal Tea <\/i>writing sessions, and on that album one suspects it would have been just a blues rock song; the addition of the vocals, the background keyboard, the penny whistle, and the overall scale elevates the track to a higher plane.<\/p>\n
A Rickenbacker was used to sound like a sitar on the opening cut \u201cNotches,\u201d which is at heart a Bonamassa blues standard, but that riff is indelible and \u201cmiles under my wheels\u201d is a catchy vocal riff. \u201cQuestions And Answers\u201d is a good smoky American blues \u2013 Bonamassa generally trades in the British sound \u2013 and the title cut instills its standard blues with a Pink Floyd influence (Division Bell<\/i>, but still) and two great guitar solos that give it a cinematic feel.<\/p>\n
Granted, not every song pushes the craft forward. \u201cThe Heart That Never Waits\u201d cops riffs and even some lyrics\/themes from Blues Of Desperation<\/i>, while \u201cMind\u2019s Eye,\u201d \u201cKnown Unknowns,\u201d and \u201cWaiting On A Loser\u201d could have been on any JB album prior. They\u2019re good, but you\u2019ve heard similar versions before, and they won\u2019t change your mind on the guy.<\/p>\n
But the song that rises above those, and makes the album one of JB\u2019s greats, is \u201cCurtain Call,\u201d an epic seven-and-a-half minute cut that employs strings, acoustic and electric guitars, backing vocals, a Middle-Eastern sense of foreboding, and lyrics about not giving up, even when it\u2019s tough: \u201cInto the fire \/ Against the wind \/ Up and down and back again \/ Under the bridge \/ Over the coals \/ This is the march of a broken soul.\u201d Once could argue it\u2019s Bonamassa\u2019s \u201cKashmir,\u201d and that\u2019s a fair comparison; it\u2019s easily the best thing he has done since 2016, if not his career. <\/p>\n
Time Clocks <\/i>is more consequential and ambitious than most of Bonamassa\u2019s work in the last decade, and even if it\u2019s not flawless, it\u2019s still worth a listen for blues rock fans. Or prog-blues-rock fans, if they\u2019re a thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":34428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7758],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-46267","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\/46267","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=46267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46267"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}