FAR FROM HOME

While "Far From Home" is a pleasant surprise for the band fans, seeing Winwood and Capaldi team-up unexpectedly to record this album in mid-1990s, it fails short in providing any substantial musical adventure.

Its impeccable production and musicianship keeps being restrained within a confines of soft, crossover pop jazz-soul style similar to Winwood solo albums from the 1980s. In the best moments, like the title song or "Some Kind Of Woman" it even reaches the brilliance of this sort of sophisticated sound that only STEELY DAN or Donald Fagen could offer. The closing, santana- esque "Mozambique" sounds like an hommage to "Jingo". In addition, there are lot of excellent guitar and organ work throughout the album.

Unfortunately, many songs border on banality and a pathetic "adult contemporary" production that is a waste of listening time. I know, in the post-U2 musical world of early 1990s the domination of Irish folk music (even to the level of mass popularity during Eurosong competition) was unavoidable and many artists with dignity took a part in creating such a trend. But what TRAFFIC did with it on "Holy Ground" is a clear misstep, starting from a totally unoriginal and commercially dominant sound of Uilean pipes, down to a rather sissy melody and lyrics. "Bljak!" - to use a word from my native language in order to desribe unbearably lousy music.

Still, the album is a pleasant one unless you expect much progress. If I were not a TRAFFIC fan I would have given 2 stars only...

PERSONAL RATING: 2/5

P.A. RATING: 3/5