Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Pat Travers Band
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2013
Duration: 57:45
Rating: 4/5
Canadian guitarist and vocalist Pat Travers needs no special introduction. Over his colorful, long-running career, this is the guy who, among other things, lent his voice to a smash hit by the Boston outfit Extreme, their evergreen Get the Funk Out, and the guy under whom none other than Iron Maiden’s ultimate drummer Nicko McBrain took his first steps into the music show biz. He’s considered one of the most astute fusionists of rock and blues energy. His gigs are famed for their sheer explosiveness and the seductiveness of his interpretation, with a strict focus on live delivery of his own handpicked forms of an always tangible musical sermon.
Despite being almost six full decades into life, Pat Travers isn’t slowing down. Last year he put out the album »Blues On Fire«, and in 2011 he toured Europe with the album »Fidelis« (2010), when we caught him live in Vrba in Carinthia, too. The man keeps riding high on the wings of his creativity. He’s expanded and beefed up his backing combo with new names, and with them he walked through the studio door once more to record the new album »Can Do«. On it, Travers looks back at the early days of his music career. He wanted to capture the energy voltage of his late-seventies live playing, embodied by the excellent live record ‘Live! Go for What You Know’ from 1978, which sums up the work of Pat Travers’s early period.
The guy is genuinely enjoying a new youth. Not only has he, with routine and experience, poured raw liveliness into the sound of the new record, which is nothing new for his past work, he’s also delivered well over 55 hefty minutes of material that thrills with its variety and with the excellent payoff of three basic elements living side by side. The trademarks of strolling across the old-school mattresses of hard and heavy rock, blues, and pomp. Master Travers once again sells the latter very effectively, thanks to his innate feel for melody. On this album, too, melody goes straight to the top of the list, so the songs fire up hard in their compact arrangement form. That element keeps Travers’s music attractive to radio airwaves, too. Flirty, erogenous, solid, and brimming with commitment and passionate drive!
Even the cover of the well-known Eurithmycs hit Here Comes The Rain lights up when translated into the language of Travers’s signature arrangement manner and vocal interpretation. Traves offers an extremely raw reinterpretation of the Eurythmics hit, dosed with his recognizable blues mimicry. Especially when he gets going on the soloing. Across the album, that’s the first and basic sign of where Pat Travers’s music comes from in its cradle. From the blues. The man is no stranger to decorating parts of songs with »slide«« ornaments on guitar, either. Travers once again builds on his tried-and-true phrase stacking with his »raspy« manly, borderline rough-hewn »desperado« singing. Vocally, Travers flat-out »thunders« through the new album, which proves that the man still has that untamed performing potency and freshness.
Travers put his new album together totally free of pressure. And, crucially, he didn’t lack for ideas at the same time. That’s why »Can Do« is an expressively varied album that doesn’t skimp on tangible musical substance or emotion. We’ve felt all of this from Travers in the past, so you could say »Can DO« is a predictably expressive album. There’s no point expecting a revolution in his songwriting vocabulary from Travers anymore, nor him trying his hand at other genres. But beyond those predictable forms, »Can DO« is played once again with plenty of passion and »ruggedness«, as a blues-soaked album should be, so that it effectively gives you goosebumps! From the pompous fusion of power blues and rock in the opening title track to the closing, cheeky boogie adventure in Red Neck Boogie, and everything in between, there isn’t a single moment that would bore you. Even in Keep Calm & Carry On, an instrumental, Travers takes over with his inventive astuteness, putting the guitar in the role of the vocals.
There’s only one remark to make about the album. The »snare« drum is a bit too »thinned out« in the sonic picture, you could even say somewhat too weak when you set it next to the chunkiness of the rawly formatted guitar riffs. Other than that, nothing to complain about. Let’s hope master Travers brings his new album »Can Do« to European stages as soon as possible, so we can experience his huge expressive charisma in a full-blooded dose of onstage excess.
Lineup
Pat Travers – vocals, guitar
Kirk McKim – guitar
Sandy Gennaro – drums
Rodney O’Quinn – bass guitar
Monica Travers – backing vocals
Sean Shannon – drums, percussion
Doug Bare – keyboards
Carl Cleaver – keyboards
Production
Pat Travers
Track list
1. Can Do
2. Stand Up / Give It Up
3. Diamond Girl
4. As Long As I’m With You
5. Long Time Gone
6. Wanted (That Was Then / This Is Now)
7. Armed And Dangerous
8. Here Comes The Rain Again
9. Keep Calm & Carry On
10. Dust & Bone
11. Waitin’ On The End Of Time
12. Red Neck Boogie.
