Maybe the problem is you need more of a live environment to loose your dark sides upon a willing audience. That’s understandable. It’s difficult sometimes to truly let go in a dry, dead studio setting. Knowing this, I’m giving you high marks for at least attempting to create an album that exhausts me after one or two listens. However, I can’t help feeling a little abandoned by the music on Now. Its failure to pull me in shows that more time is needed to nurture the new fruit of this old band so it may ripen.
So, it’s not you, Gooch, Churchill, Lyons and R. Lee; it’s me. Now that I’ve reached middle age, my expectations of music are a little higher for classic rockers than they would be for some of the current groups whose members cut their teeth on albums like Sssh…, and A Space In Time. Considering you guys, along with contemporaries like Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, The Who, Rod Argent and myriad others brought the form to life, it’s more than appropriate that you now dig down deep into your roots and heave all of that youthful angst on me once again.
Article comments
1 - Vern Halen
I loved the original band, and will have to hear this at least once. The rhythm section never really got its due, as no one seemed to see past frontman Alvin Lee.
It's funny, but you're right: the more old band reform, the better the quality seems to be (re: the recent Cream DVD). Now, if the remaining Beatles (bass & drums) would get together with the remaining Who (vocals & guitar), we could declare classic rock 'n' roll has come full circle & it can be declared over for good.