Word: clapton
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Four years ago, Eric Clapton played a benefit concert in New York City. It was a special performance, a homage to blues legends, and the songs on his playlist were by the likes of Elmore James and Willie Dixon. This annoyed at least a few audience members, who were expecting Clapton to trot out his hits. "Play some rock 'n' roll!" one man shouted. A couple of other people in the crowd got their coats and left early. They missed a great show. Buoyed by the blues, Clapton played with impressive confidence and sounded sturdier than he had in years...
...report, then, that on his new album, Pilgrim (Reprise), Clapton sounds weaker than he has in years. It's a compromised, blues-tinged pop-rock album, with drippy melodies and cautious, manicured guitar solos. What it reminds one of is this: on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, amid the high-fashion shops and trendy eateries, there's a House of Blues restaurant/nightclub that's designed to look like a rural, rusted tin shack. Frankly, it looks stupid and out of place. Listening to Pilgrim, one gets the same feeling--there's no room for blues roughness on this...
Although several of the songs on Pilgrim deal with the death of Clapton's four-year-old son Conor in 1991, the impersonal, generic pop gloss of this album prevents us from really communing with his pain. The confessional My Father's Eyes, the CD's opening number, is so polished and plodding it never comes close to evoking emotion in the listener--unless you consider boredom an emotion. As for the next cut, River of Tears, it has a central metaphorical construction so lazy that one half expects the next track to be titled Needle in a Haystack. Simple...
...hard to keep someone as talented as Clapton down for an entire album, and there are a few songs on Pilgrim that work. One Chance has a potent, brooding soulfulness; another song, Sick and Tired, features grinding, growling guitar work by Clapton as well as some strong, swaggering vocals. Partway through the song, during a down-and-dirty guitar solo, when Clapton lets loose an "Ow!" you feel, palpably, his joyful sense of abandon in wallowing in blues sorrow. These two songs alone are almost worth the price of the whole album...
Almost, but not quite. Fans of genuine blues guitar would do well to avoid buying Pilgrim--hey, that's what listening stations in record stores are for--and instead pick up a copy of Clapton's superior 1994 album of blues standards, From the Cradle, or, if that's already in their CD collection, blues great Robert Johnson's King of the Delta Blues Singers. Clapton, of course, is more than just a bluesman--from Sunshine of Your Love to Layla to Tears in Heaven, he has displayed a mastery of a variety of musical styles, including hard rock...