Label: Provogue Records/Mascot Label Group
Release date: August 19, 2022
Production: Eric Corne
Album length: 57.54 min
Genre: Blues Rock
Rating: 8.5/10
Walter Trout! The man, the myth, the legend. Blues rock at its finest. When this guy drops a new studio record, you simply have to check it out right away. At the very least. That’s the bare minimum. “Ride” is the thirtieth studio album in the long career of a legendary blues hero. Yep, you read that right. Thirtieth.
Before work on this album even began, Trout moved with his family from the US to Denmark (which doesn’t mean it wasn’t recorded in the US – in three different studios, no less). Here Trout once again found time for poetry, drawing inspiration among other things from his tough childhood, when he grew up under the often (too) heavy hand of his stepfather (the opener Ghosts and the strikingly vulnerable, dark and dramatic Hey Mama – on which Trout is accusing toward his mother). Walter recorded the new album in the company of trusted studio sidekicks – drummer Michael Leasure and keyboardist Teddy Andreadis – with Jamie Hunting stepping in on bass this time, replacing Trout’s regular bassist Johnny Griparic (who couldn’t make the recording sessions because of Covid-19 restrictions).
Walter, who turned a solid 71 this year, is an inexhaustible well of ideas and creativity. “Ride”, arriving just two years after its more-than-excellent predecessor “Ordinary Madness” (2020, RockLine review), is fresh proof of a renaissance in this kind of songwriting insight. It delivers, once again, everything the renowned blues singer-songwriter has spoiled us with in the past. The man who miraculously survived a liver transplant a few years ago found, in the conditions of lockdown, plenty of time to look back at the road he has traveled. And through all the ups and downs and the rebirths, phoenix-style, again and again, the seventy-something Walter Trout says the following about life on the new album (in the manner of a five-year-old boy): “But, really, life is kind of a ride too, isn’t it? And I want to live mine to the fullest.”
“Ride” is an album where Walter is once again in the right place in every move he makes, at every moment. With soul, heart and, of course, a filigree touch with a thousand and one faces, whether we’re talking about his brilliantly lived-in, sensual vocal approach or the expression of emotion through the cunning placement of passionately chosen guitar notes. A master is a master. And he stays a master. While ballads like Follow You Back Home and Waiting For The Down have already become a kind of standard in Walter’s bluesy artistic rhetoric, something his followers always wait for, ‘starving’ with hunger, the sped-up title track brings a moment where the kinetics of the phrasing carry the album toward a blend of blues and hard rock, and even touches of arrangement typical of pop, as well as country (The Fertile Soil), all of it slyly disguised in the production and the songwriting format. These points where optimism and cheerfulness shine through lighten the album’s otherwise raging storm of blues complaint and melancholy. The playful, cheeky Leave It All Behind, with its added sonic hairdo of horns and honky-tonk piano, fits in here easily too.
Tracks like Better Day Ahead are harder and craggier, with the legendary musician’s raw, almost screaming, stripped-bare vocal delivery, while High Is Low sounds especially tight and ‘bandy’, dressed up with harmonica flourishes. In these songs, loaded with the weight of pain and despair, the rugged, massive wall of sound is rounded out by the sound of Hammond organs, and Walter’s phenomenal soloing gives you goosebumps again and again. The faster, guitar-bristling blues rocker I Worry Too Much brings a brilliant jump in the album’s dynamics, and the keyboard approach and arrangement deliver a ‘spiked’ funky jazz-rock fusion sentiment that would make even Stevie Wonder raise an eyebrow. And then there’s a look to the future in the closing, calm and solemn Destiny, which wins you over once more with delicate vocals and the softness of the guitar tones, adorned by the filigree attentiveness of Trout’s fine handiwork.
The best blues and blues rock are made by the most wounded souls. That’s how it goes. Walter Trout remains the epitome. Elusive, special, ferociously passionate and energetic like few others in this genre, especially among white bluesmen. On top of all that, this brilliant musician offers, in his impeccable solos full of fiery passion, alongside feelings of pain and melancholy, a bounty of childlike playfulness and teasing that just won’t run dry. The man has therefore put out yet another superb studio record, bubbling over with the sensual glow of sincerity, the kind that only one and only one can deliver in his vivid rhetoric as a one-of-a-kind blues rock original. Walter Trout.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. Ghosts
2. Ride
3. Follow You Back Home
4. So Many Sad Goodbyes
5. High Is Low
6. Waiting For the Dawn
7. Better Days Ahead
8. The Fertile Soil
9. I Worry Too Much
10. Leave It All Behind
11. Hey Mama
12. Destiny
Lineup:
Walter Trout – vocals, guitar
Tedy ‘ZigZag’ Andreadis – keyboards, Hammond B3 organ
Jamie Hunting – bass guitar
Michael Leasure – drums & percussion
Guest musician:
Anthony Grisham – guitar
