Artist: Healey, Jeff
Label: Arista Records
Released: 1988
Length: 48.52
Rating: 3.5/5
See The Light is the debut from fallen blues rock hero Jeff Healey. It’s a fairly inconsistent record, packed with beefy blues-rock manifestos, but also, much to the detriment of the album’s overall sound, with radical detours into forced, strictly pop-minded tunes. And it’s precisely those that drastically drag down the value of this otherwise mostly thrilling document.
Healey’s playing style was admittedly unusual (being blind, the man played with the guitar lying flat across his lap), yet his sound still draws plenty of parallels with his blues-rock contemporaries. It follows, inevitably, that in the otherwise confident delivery of the distinctly flavored ’80s blues rock that See The Light serves up, Jeff often comes off as too formulaic. But we shouldn’t be too hard on the debut of the tragically departed guitarist; with its proverbial clunkiness and seriously limited flexibility, blues rock is, after all, a genre that needs special treatment. Healey’s talent is beyond question, and what’s especially impressive is the guitarist’s knack for creating roughly grained melodic shapes and forms, then boldly dropping them into traditionally structured songs. This quirk in Jeff Healey’s vocabulary is a solid guarantee of innovative sniffing around in a genre where real novelty is chronically in short supply anyway.
For all its variety, See The Light opens by setting relatively high standards for both performance and songwriting, as Jeff Healey whips the album’s main trump card out of his sleeve with Confidence Man, no second thoughts. Uncompromising, decisive and right on the money, Confidence Man has all the traits of a modern blues-rock gem of exceptional destructive power, hiding below deck a body-shop blend of razor-sharp riffing built on the appealing minimalism of a vital rhythmic engine. Confidence Man is a faithful picture book of Jeff Healey’s character, and he stays unrivaled even on the more complex numbers, like the welcome My Girl and River Of No Return. As already mentioned, the energy of that opening trio then starts breaking down in stages, as Jeff, eager to serve up more accessible material, allows himself a few less attractive maneuvers. That’s surely where That’s What They Say belongs, a simple, pop-song-minded piece with its bow pointed squarely at commercial recognition. Jeff tries to please, but with the exception of the fairly successful Angel Eyes, his vocals lack the punch needed to blend convincingly with those proverbially undemanding musical appetites. Healey rescues the fate of the nearly stranded ship with old recipes, which, given a wide imaginative radius, contribute generously to the growth of rather clumsily conceived songs like Someday, Someway. Healey manages to capture a moment of pure sentimentality with the excellent Blue Jean Blues, which, if you were to shamelessly strip away all the fire of the guitar solo, would shamelessly remind you of Otis’s Double Trouble. Jeff repays another debt to a blues legend, belatedly, with a cautious cover of Freddie King’s Hide Away, solidly restrained but with no noticeable departure from most of the versions of this blues standard you’ve already heard. In that respect, the subtle instrumental Nice Problem To Have is surely far more exciting, with the guitarist effectively blending the traditional with the contemporary.
With See The Light, Jeff Healey boldly stepped up alongside the standard-bearers of a new generation of blues rock, which had already revitalized the genre with great success back in the early ’80s. With the debut’s colorful array of highlights, Jeff got himself a good send-off for future adventures, though sadly he only rarely managed to recreate the natural vibrancy of that first record. You could say See The Light set the bar way too high for all the albums that followed, but for a few priceless moments it did manage to bring this excellent guitarist, innovator and prolific creator closer to the giants of blues rock.
Lineup
Jeff Healey: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Robbie Blunt: guitar
Benmont Tench: keyboards
Joe Rockman: bass
Tom Stephen: drums
Bobbye Hall: percussion
Production
Jimmy Iovine, Greg Ladanyi & Thom Panunzio
Tracklist
1. Confidence Man
2. My Little Girl
3. River of No Return
4. Don’t Let Your Chance Go By
5. Angel Eyes
6. Nice Problem to Have
7. Someday, Someway
8. I Need to Be Loved
9. Blue Jean Blues
10. That’s What They Say
11. Hide Away
12. See the Light
