Following his album Ice Pickin’<\/i>, bluesman Albert Collins should have been on a creative streak. He had new-found relevance in the industry, and things looked like they could only go up from that point.<\/p>\n
If only Frostbite<\/i>, Collins’s 1980 follow-up release, lived up to that promise. Collins’s second outing for Alligator is a notable step down in terms of quality, though it still has its moments.<\/p>\n
Featuring most of the same backup band that Collins had on Ice Pickin’<\/i>, he plows through eight new additions to his song catalog this time around – but without a good portion of the humor found on the preceding effort, and nowhere near the same level of energy.<\/p>\n
The highlights of this one are “Snowed In,” one track that does showcase Collins’s humor (and is easily relatable for anyone who’s survived a Chicago winter) and “Brick”. Using his Telecaster to help paint the musical scene, Collins accurately creates on “Snowed In” a picture of dealing with a troublesome automotive on a cold, snowy evening, but with tongue firmly in cheek. As for “Brick,” that’s one that truly must be heard to appreciate.<\/p>\n
The problem with Frostbite<\/i> is there aren’t nearly enough moments like these to fill the disc. Tracks like “Blue Monday Hangover,” “Give Me My Blues” and “If You Love Me Like You Say” are expertly performed, but they are lacking in deep emotion that other works from Collins featured. Perhaps the issue is his reliance on material from other artists; on the two songs written exclusively by Collins, it somehow feels like he has a stronger connection with the material. (I am aware that “Brick” is a Johnnie Morrisette composition, which counters the claim I just made.)<\/p>\n
Look, there is no question that Collins is a superb guitarist. That was never called into doubt. But Frostbite<\/i> is nowhere near as approachable an album as his previous effort – or later efforts, for that matter. It’s good, but… well, it’s just cold<\/i>, dammit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[10770],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-47008","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-albert-collins","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47008","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=47008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47008"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=47008"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=47008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}