The Derek Trucks Band - Soul Serenade
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Free Music Notes for Soul Serenade
Free Music Review: First of Derek Trucks that I bought
Hit: 4 Stars
And I am/was plesantly surprised. The vocal appearance of Greg Allman was unexpected in this otherwise instrumental effort. This is no typical offering; it belies catagorization, just like I like it. Somewhere between jazz/rock fusion and blues there is the Derek Trucks Band. Derek has a real gift in using the slide; it sounds smooth and unforced. Just glides along... A very good effort.Free Music Review: Are two great songs enough for an album?
Hit: 4 Stars
Derek Trucks is an incredible musician. He brings virtuosity, taste, variety, and great musicians with him every time he releases an album. And I have all of them.Derek Trucks comes in many flavors. Some of these flavors are nice, interesting, educational, etc. The blues flavor is my favorite. So, each album has only a few songs that I really like. Yet, I like those songs so much that I listen to them over and over. And, those songs provide all the value I need to buy the album.
In the "Soul Serenade" album, there are two songs that provide that value: Drown In My Own Tears (which has enough value for the whole album) and Soul Serenade.
I played this album for some good friends who love the jazz flavor. They loved it so much that I gave it to them. I had to buy myself another copy to replace it.
Free Music Review: Aptly Titled
Hit: 5 Stars
I was late coming to appreciate Derek Trucks (took the Allman Brothers latest, HITTING THE NOTE, and The Flecktone's LITTLE WORLDS on which he makes a guest appearance, to get my interest). Quickly I've collected the last three of his Band's recordings and this has become my favorite. It holds together well.
My first impression of Trucks is that he is the incarnation of Duane Allman, or at least part of him. I'm not the first to get this impression. It makes me happy to feel our culture is getting stable enough to begin recognizing such continuity. Now, if we can just do so without enshrining the pop artists in religion (a la the tulkus of Tibet).....So after taking notice of this guy I go back into my collection and hear him on a Col. Bruce Hampton retrospective, playing electric sitar with the Col. at age 3. And Derek is playing slide! This guy obviously has natural talent, but it is talent he is serious about developing too.
What matters is that he can play well, and encourage others to do so too. Trucks plays like a whale moving easily through the depths, and his band moves easily between styles, from reggae to jazz to blues, to latin, middle eastern, and oh yes southern rock. (This CD is predominantly jazzy, check out JOYFUL NOISE for more eclectic variety.) I really like Kofi's flute playing here. It is a treat to have a modern and young band use the flute prominantly. The sense of creativity and exploration is refreshing. These songs are nothing flashy in isolation, pretty underspoken actually, but together make a soothing, uplifting and yet grounding experience.
The bonus (on computer) interview is great, it really opened my eyes to this young artists intelligence and depth and gave me cause for joy about the future of music.
Free Music Review: Not bad for half an album
Hit: 3 Stars
This CD is marginal. It begins with Soul Serenade, based on the version performed by the Allman Brothers thirty years before (available on the 4 disc box set). Derek rips into it after only a minute long buildup.
The problem is, the album peaks there, at two minutes in. That's not to say that completely crashes after that, it's kind of like going to DisneyWorld and riding Space Mountain first.
The other highlight is a bluesy rock number entitled "Drown in my own Tears" featuring Gregg Allman. This easily sounds like it could have been on the Allman's 2003 incredible release, Hittin' the Hote.
However, my recommendation is to check out that CD, then Joyful Noise, and then this one.
One last interesting note is that these tracks were actually recorded before the band's last CD: Joyful Noise. Also, Gregg's vocal part was recorded on a seperate date from Derek's guitar leads, but they still manage to work well together.
Free Music Review: I get the serenade part . . .
Hit: 5 Stars
. . . but where's the soul? By the way, it took real courage to write this review, knowing, as I did when I wrote it, that I'd get slaughtered by the legion of Derek Trucks groupies. Just kidding about the courage part.Don't get me wrong; Derek Trucks is a very accomplished slide guitarist, who's put together a pretty killer basic band, but this disc just seems wrong-headed from the get-go. Unlike those who hear a wonderful coalescing of different genres--jazz, blues, soul, reggae, oriental, world music, Southern rock, fusion--all I hear is a lot of unassimilated musical styles just kinda lying there. If I had to classify this music, I would call it blues, although of a rather tepid sort.
Where's the res? Where's the soul?
The addition of Kofi Burbridge (whoever he is) on flute is a particularly bizarre touch. Meant, one supposes, to be exotic, to give a kind of Indian flavor to the proceedings, it instead underscores the---
Stop the presses!! I GET IT!!! What started out as a two-star review, then morphed into three stars, has now become a full-fledged five star rave.
Forget the carping, forget the small-mindedness, forget the pseudo-sophisticated anal-retentive hand-wringing--this is one cool disc. Yes, it's different, yes it's superficially too jam-band oriented for anyone with authentic musical tastes, but there's something about Derek Trucks, some kind of larger-than-life musical personality, that just blows it all away--some ur-Southern white soul. Or something.
Actually, the more I listen to this, the more I'm a card-carrying fan. It's actually beginning to make sense, in a weird sort of way. I'm still struggling a bit with his read on "Afro Blue," esp. the solo flute intro, but even that's beginning to get to me. And, by the way, Kofi Burbridge is really a killer flautist.
So excuse me for dissing this disc in the first few paragraphs. And thanks for bearing with me, as this review is a kind of experiment: I came to writing it very conflicted, and I decided to just put down whatever I was feeling as I listened to Soul Serenade one more time. The fact that I was initially not a fan--or at least on the fence--despite numerous listenings and was completely won over as I listened while writing the review speaks volumes not only about the power of this disc to touch listeners, but also about the wild and unruly power of music to win over even the hardcore skeptics, of which I was the chief.