Artist: Cray, Robert
Label: Vanguard Records
Release: 2010
Duration: 74.02
Rating: 4/5
The annals of pop culture list Robert Cray as the musician who helped bring the blues back to life in the mid-’80s. Soon after, Cray made his name as a guitar virtuoso and musical innovator with an unusual gift: the ability to popularize a genre that was practically considered clinically dead. Over the years the guitarist’s expressive portrait has steadily picked up more pleasant features, growing mellower and more sophisticated. And even though on his recent studio records Cray has gradually let go of the rough-edged sonic stamp, kin to the highly flammable, timeless melodic texture of “Strong Persuader” and “Bad Influence”, his live power hasn’t suffered one bit. “Cookin’ in Mobile”, recorded this February at the Saenger Theatre in Alabama, will once again get the blood pumping with its tried-and-true formula of soul-spiced blues.
The guitarist’s latest live album serves up a marathon of first-rate tension, thrilling sparks and a teasing swell of emotion, basically all the trademark ingredients of Robert Cray’s musical kitchen. Right off the bat it’s worth noting that “Cookin’ in Mobile” dishes out plenty of material from his latest album “This Time” (RockLine review here). Cray gave the presentation of that one a lot of room. The idea of pushing it is of course welcome, considering that the guitarist’s discography is hardly stingy with live recordings, where his career highlights can be found in countless interpretive shades. This time around we get to experience the excellent “stage feel” of newer tunes like “That’s What Keeps Me Rockin”, “Chicken In The Kitchen” and “I Can’t Fail”. Cray, with his proverbially brilliant tone and refined knack for building atmosphere, gives these fewer mood swings than the standards “Time Makes Two”, “Right Next Door (Because Of Me)” and above all “Smoking Gun”, where the stores of dramatically emotional outbursts and flashes of humor get emptied out. Cray’s unique “touch” adds a completely different quality to what would normally be described as a very exciting but pretty basic blues structure. We only get that structure in its traditional format once, with an idyllic ride through “Sitting on Top of the World”, which, thanks to its ambient, minimalist approach, ends up quite far from the standard form of Howlin Wolf.
“Cookin’ in Mobile” doesn’t pull any especially daredevil stylistic swerve away from the steady course of Cray’s recent studio adventures, which you could call a fairly expected turn of events. The man stays faithful to an expressive style that, besides its brilliant musical foundation, remains an inexhaustible well of refined blues potions, ones that, we can say, reveal the soul and character of a musical figure indispensable to modern blues. We can count ourselves lucky: we’ve caught Robert Cray once again in a gentlemanly gallop across his impressive discography. The pity is that the jumps are, chronologically speaking, too headlong and too wide, and a touch too clumsily done in terms of content (the lack of space because of the bundled DVD simply took its toll). So plenty of a little gem was shamelessly sacrificed, one that would surely have seen the light of day under different circumstances.
Lineup
Robert Cray: vocals, guitar
Richard Cousins: bass
Jim Pugh: keyboards
Tony Braunagel: drums
Production
Robert Cray
Tracklist
1. Our Last Time
2. Anytime
3. Love 2009
4. Right Next Door (Because Of Me)
5. Chicken In The Kitchen
6. Sitting on Top of the World
7. One In the Middle
8. Lotta Lovin’
9. Smoking Gun
10. I Can’t Fail
11. That’s What Keeps Me Rockin’
12. Time Makes Two
