Derek Trucks Band
Songlines

(Columbia)

First Appeared in The Music Box, February 2006, Volume 13, #2

Written by John Metzger

Best-known for his blues-oriented work with the Allman Brothers Band, Derek Trucks quietly has been working from a more eclectic palette with his own eponymous outfit. Since launching his solo career more than a decade ago, he has been offering the jam band crowd an ecstatically sophisticated fusion of jazz, blues, and world music grooves. With the release of Joyful Noise, his major label debut, however, Trucks began taking a more polished approach to recording, and in making vocalist Mike Mattison a mainstay of his ensemble, he gave his latest endeavor Songlines a decidedly soul-pop flavor. Without a doubt, the effort is his most compositionally structured outing to date, though his more streamlined methodology also has the unfortunate side effect of tempering the organic nature of his experimental tendencies. As a result, Songlines is somewhat of a mixed bag, and much of its material — whether it’s the original compositions I’ll Find My Way and Revolution or a cover of Toots & the Maytals’ Sailing On — traverses ground that is similar in style to Santana’s Spirits Dancing in the Flesh. Even so, Trucks’ stellar slide work salvages the otherwise inoffensively lackluster arrangements, and on tracks such as the Led Zeppelin-in-New Orleans earthiness of Crow Jane; the mystical medley of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s Sahib Teri Bandi and Maki Madni; the meditative pulse of Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s Volunteered Slavery; and the funky, jazz-driven beats of All I Do, he and his band come closer to conjuring the sort of magic that his fans have come to expect. 

Songlines is available from Amazon.com.
To order, Click Here!

For Canadian orders, please Click Here!

For UK orders, please Click Here!

Ratings

1 Star:   Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!

Copyright © 2006 The Music Box