ZEBOP

Don´t let the trendy cover (which looks too much like Duran Duran type of album) fools you. With Inner Secrets and, especially, Marathon, Santana did start to go AOR. Well, that was happening to a lot of bands at the period (Kansas,Styx, Journey, etc.) and this album follows the pattern, although on Zebop Carlos decided to bring back as many elements of the "old" Santana sound as possible, so lacking on Marathon. The intro with Cat Stevens Change shows it boldly: a new arrangement with lots fo latin percussion and a great guitar solo at the end. So, with the remaining tracks, we have a kind of a double personality case here: sometimes you find the band still trying hard to emulate, and succeeding, Journey (maybe with a little more percussion): Searching, Over and Over and The Sensitive Kind are the most obvious ones, with singer Alex Lingwood proving he could be as similar to Steve Perry on both timbre and delivering as so very few people can, while tracks like Primera Invasion, Tales of Kilimanjaro and Hannibal are so much "classic" Santana they would not sound misplaced on Abraxas or Caravansarai.

Zebop is the album more known for their 1981 hit Winning. This superb version of the Russ Ballards title track of his second album was a big hit all over the world, and deservedly so. But fortunately Santana decided this time to give us a CD with much variety and a combination of the new and old sound. Maybe too varied, though. Sometimes Zebop makes you think there are different bands playing on the same LP, since they seemed unable to mix the two styles on the same tracks. Still, the high quality of the songs is quite what made Santana survived the 80´s with more ease and dignity than most of their peers. Therefore, with all its faults, the album aged well and still sound enjoyable and well made so many years after its release.

Rating: 3,5 stars.