BLUES WITH A FEELING

Blues Rock is certainly not my favourite style of music, but I can enjoy the odd Blues guitar lick or even sometimes a whole Blues Rock song. But not even my hero Steve Hackett can make a whole album of Blues Rock interesting to me. Like I said, I like the odd Blues guitar lick, especially coming from Steve, and I also enjoy his harmonica playing, and I love his vocals. But what I like best about Steve is his ability to fuse different styles into something new and exciting. It is when he alternates between his many different influences within the context of the same album, or even within the same song, that he creates his best moments, not when he concentrates on one style only for a whole album.

There are many Blues guitarists in the world, and many Classical guitarists too, and Rock guitarists, etc. But what is so special about Steve for me is his ability to blend all of his influences into one. This ability is put on hold whenever he decides to go into one single direction for a whole album. With Blues With A Feeling, like with Steve's Classical guitar albums, he goes too far into one single direction and thus looses some of what makes him so special as an artist. It would be very interesting indeed to see what would have turned out if Steve had attempted to integrate and fuse some of this Blues Rock material with some material from a Classical guitar album like Momentum and a Pop/Rock album like Till We Have Faces. It is hard to imagine perhaps, but I suspect that the result would be a (much weaker) version of the excellent Guitar Noir album, which is a great example of an album that shows all the different aspects of Steve Hackett within the context of the same album; Rock, Pop, Blues, Jazz, Folk and Classical, etc.

I am not going to comment on each individual song here since they are mostly quite similar. Steve's guitar sound is recognizable, as are his vocals and harmonica playing, but overall this music still manages to be rather anonymous. Blues With A Feeling is exactly what the title says, but the feeling in question is not a very good one. This is by no means a disaster or a poor album, but it is not very interesting or memorable either.

Like Hackett's Classical albums, Blues With A Feeling is recommended strictly to fans and collectors, or to people with a deep special interest in Blues Rock.

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