AMAR CABALLERO

Amar Caballero is the second album from british rock group Babe Ruth. Babe Ruth´s debut album First Base was an excellent rock album with lots of progressive tendencies ( most notably a cover of King Kong by Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention) while this second album is a bit more simple and influenced by both soul and funk.

The music is highly rythmic and the rhythm section is a real treat on this album. The album is build like this: One rocker, one slow song and so fouth for the first seven songs until the last epic title track which is a latin influenced mostly instrumental spanish guitar driven song. A great ending to a good album. I enjoy the rocking tracks like Lady, Cool Jerk, Doctor Love and especially the cool Gimme Some Leg very much while the more slow soft tracks Broken Cloud, Baby Pride and We Are Holding On with their orchestra drenced harmonies are also good but not really my favorites.

The musicianship is really excellent. Try and listen to the attitude in Janita Haan´s voice. She is just so great that lady. The rhythm section is as mentioned extremely tight and funky while main composer and guitarist/ keyboardist/ percussionist / vocalist Alan Shacklock is adds lots of great guitar playing and arrangements. That man is a very good guitarist which he of course already proved on the debut.

The production is really good. This is how a good seventies production sounds like.

The latin inspired cover picture isn´t especially pretty but I guess it suits it´s purpose of telling us that this is latin influenced rock music.

I really like this album even though First Base was a bit more exciting. But I fear for the future releases from the band as Amar Caballero hasn´t got much intricate progressive playing or arrangements. Above all this album rocks and that´s nice enough but I´m not challenged. I´ll give Amar Caballero 3 stars.