Artist: Bonamassa, Joe
Label: Provogue Records
Release: 2009
Running time: 64.14
Rating: 3/5
Joe Bonamassa, probably the hottest piece of iron in the modern school of blues rock right now, has recently returned with the long-awaited album The Ballad Of John Henry. It’s the guitarist’s seventh studio effort, and it’s bound to stir up a bunch of awkward questions all over again. Is this the next step in the American guitarist’s evolutionary pilgrimage, a big-hearted effort to spread the blues tradition? Or is The Ballad Of John Henry just one more in a long line of albums that has next to nothing to do with the blues? Either way, chances are that chewing your way through this record will leave fans of good old blues rock and devotees of the jangling sounds of traditional blues equally disappointed.
The Ballad Of John Henry brings nothing earth-shatteringly new to the table, and in fact slots into the more average releases of this barely-begun sales year. The songs boast carefully built frameworks of classic rock music, with foundations thickly greased by the obligatory protective layer of blues influences. The expected outpourings of sentiment, backed up by venomous, dynamically polished guitar playing, show up here only in fits and starts. Sadly! Bonamassa is without a doubt a well-schooled blues-rock rider, but his delivery is less impulsive reaction and more a templated run through the basic blues-rock moves, locked in the tight grip of classic rock production that leaves no room for any notable departure from the standards of modern hard rock.
If anything, Bonamassa is missing character, the kind that would let the guy’s undeniable talent spin the wheels of a recognizable, distinctive sonic take on blues rock, which is exactly what we were hoping for. Only rarely does it manage to peek out from behind the protective façade of thundering, roughly cut riffs, through which the young man, upbeat and brimming with optimistic, often way too impatient enthusiasm, clumsily steers between the reefs of his beloved genre landscapes. Then there’s the pale, often downright indefinable color of Bonamassa’s voice, which lacks the convincing bite that’s practically a requirement for any credible blues orator. Joe openly flirts with unsteady shifts of mood from the title track onward. The Ballad Of John Henry obligingly wraps itself around a sharp, funk-spiked melodic form that, with a more serious injection of passion, could even rival some of Glenn Hughes’ newer creations. We get similar rhythmic rotation later on with Tom Waits’ Jockey Full Of Bourbon. Bonamassa casually dismounts his funky nag with a decent run through the Sam Brown classic Stop!, whose heavy rock outfit, innovatively crocheted at the edges, delivers one of the album’s few truly impressive moments. And that’s where the festival of thrilling original material sadly ends. Last Kiss has clearly inherited the genes of Waters’ Rollin’ and Tumblin’, the Funkier Than a Mosquito’s Tweweter spin-off from the happily married Turners struggles to find a workable balance between old-school-inspired horn arrangements and emotionally scrubbed guitar passages, and the otherwise promising The Great Flood still reminds you too much of a tearjerker in the style of Gary Moore.
However I turn it, Bonamassa lacks progressive stylistic solutions and innovation, which the young man strives hard for. Which is a shame. Without them, the guy is doomed to wander in the substantive vacuum of frigid blues rock, set a step or two too close to conventional hard rock to boot. Bonamassa’s talent is obvious and certainly admirable, and so is the conviction with which he tirelessly hands us his take on the blues. But those compliments don’t change the fact that, all the praise notwithstanding, Joe is clearly still struggling to find his own identity. If nothing else, The Ballad Of John Henry proves that the blues as a genre, or rather its younger generation of protagonists, is badly missing real character today. Put differently, modern blues has a serious image problem.
Lineup
Joe Bonamassa: guitar, vocals
Blondie Chaplin: rhythm guitar
Rick Melick: keyboards
Carmine Rojas: bass
Anton Fig: drums
Bogie Bowles: drums
Production
Kevin Shirley
Tracklist
1. The Ballad Of John Henry
2. Stop!
3. Last Kiss
4. Jockey Full Of Bourbon
5. Story Of A Quarryman
6. Lonesome Road Blues
7. Happier Times
8. Feelin’ Good
9. Funkier Than A Mosquito’s Tweeter
10. The Great Flood
11. From The Valley
12. As The Crow Flies
