Word: sparkingly
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...released every rehash of old songs possible ranging from live albums to greatest hits collections to half-live, half-studio albums. Traffic's course struck a different vein. Whereas Mason remained stagnant musically, Traffic explored new musical realms whose limits it reached rapidly. With the release of Low Spark, the group's personnel doubled, drummer Jim Capaldi was shifted to tambourine beater, dancer, and all-purpose buffoon, and long bluesy jams became part of the group's repertoire...
...follow-up to Low Spark, Shootout at the Fantasy Factory, was identical to its predecessor right up to the album design. The one thing missing was imagination--almost every critic had his fun with the title of one cut, "Sometimes I Feel So Uninspired." Even worse, that concert tour was marked by the overshadowing of Stevie Winwood on organ by a part of the Muscle Shoals rhythm section and the omnipresent Rebop on bongos, congas, and other assorted skins. With Capaldi prancing about as the meaningless figurehead, one actually wondered if the Traffic known to millions had really existed...
...album released in Europe from that tour featured high-powered versions of favorites like "Glad" and "Freedom Rider." For American listeners, Traffic's case remained tragic. Only one of the two discs was released in the U.S.--the inferior one, with dragged-out versions of songs taken from Low Spark and Shootout...
Musically, the album is a gentle melange between the group's style as represented during the Barleycorn and Low Spark sessions. The disc's first cut, "Something New," is a good time boogie tune in which Chris Wood's horns, instead of wandering aimlessly as in the past, provide the perfect rhythm backdrop to Stevie Winwood's crisp piano playing. "Dream Gerrard" is the piece most indicative of the album's general mood. Winwood seems to place more emphasis on keyboards as opposed to guitar with the piano (both electric and conventional) figuring prominently. In addition, Winwood's experimentation with...
...Dostoyevsky's kind of gambling: you gamble because you're trying to win back an unknown something you lost a long time ago. Segal lives thinking the odds are stacked against him. He's separated from his wife, he's in debt to a man named Spark (played by scriptwriter Joseph Walsh). So he's betting for survival--if he can control chance just for a minute, maybe he can get a grip on his life. When he finally wins he doesn't even want the spoils. A classic kind of gambler, which Segal and Altman do credit...