Frantic Moment starts with stunning reverse echoed guitar licks, panning around in a sonic soup, strident female backing vocals hypnotically sing as a tight and explosive drum beat and drawling bass guitar induce you further. So Goes The Story explodes with meaty wah wah guitar rocking out as the backing vocals sing a sped up rap line, as always a the beat is strong and some sticky wah wah synth or guitar parts dress up the rest of the song nu funk textures creating a full landscape if a little busy on this track. Hazel's clockwork, mechanical blues guitar playing often devolves in to liquid jazz lines but is always a treat for the ear particularly when balanced with the 'wet' squelchy, wah wah bass plodding along and the compact, biscuit box drums. The itty bitty blues notes that Hazel unravels in the solo in the Beatles cover of I Want You (She's So Heavy) are fresh, absorbing and feature the right amount of legato and shredding as a climax as his solo gets more intricate. On the cover the backing vocals are in sync with guitar and piano as they reinvigorate it with their hypnotic mixture of lilting harmonies, fluid blues playing and a punchy rhythm section to create a funk rock sound that packs a punch but is also very smooth with a dark undertone.
As with a lot of his work on this album, the reverb is increased at specific parts of his guitar work mid solo for added impact. His fat tone and fluid playing only gets cuts deeper with these touches of chamber reverb emphasising the thick, tactile fretwork. I covered California Dreaming in a past post but Physical Love is a strong substitute for that epic Mamas and Papas cover that bookends this revelation of an album; here he employs a Hendrix styled use of a Hammond Organ filter and the drawling distortion as Hazel makes impressive use of pulls and slides to a syncopated electric piano groove. An analog synthesizer meows away in duck like wheezes adding an eccentric tone as Hazel's guitar is bizarrely pushed so far back in the mix its hardly audible above the rhythm section. On What About It Hazel's playing is more obviously funk with accented parts and more percussive sparse playing
No comments:
Post a Comment