Jeff Beck during the EMOTION & COMMOTION sessions in Los Angeles.
Don't let my headline fool you. I love Jeff Beck's new album, EMOTION & COMMOTION, which is finally available today on iTunes.
I've been waiting for it since January, when I read a brief about it on the fender.com blog when I was out in Anaheim (Yes, I still miss the NAMM show).
In 2010, a new Jeff Beck album is as important to me as a new Stevie Ray Vaughan album was in 1985. It's an event -- and a rare one at that. Beck hasn't released a studio ablum since 2003. Only 86 percent of my current wardrobe dates from 2003! I'm kidding. It's more like 92 percent.
I downloaded the $11.99 iTunes version of the album, which has one bonus track (the fun "Poor Boy," featuring Imelda May) and a rather sizeable (428MG) iTunes LP multimedia thing with detailed liner notes, a video of Beck chatting with Alice Cooper, some recording-session photos, guitar tabs and other interesting stuff.
Besides Imelda May, the album features Olivia Safe and Joss Stone on vocals; Tal Wilkenfeld, Pino Palladino and Chris Bruce on bass; Vinnie Colaiuta, Clive Deamer and Alessia Mattalia on drums; Jason Rebello and Pete Murray on keyboards -- not to mention a 64-piece orchestra plus several conductors and programmers.
EMOTION & COMMOTION features 10 songs via CD and 11 songs via expanded iTunes download.
Anyway, as my headline implies, there's a lot of slow, powerful stuff on EMOTION & COMMOTION. There is some commotion to be found, mind you, but it's been relegated to just a few tunes, namely "Hammerhead" and some of the middle bits of "There's No Other Me."
Beck's guitar sings on this album. It sings like a legendary opera singer -- an ageless, seen-it-all, done-it-all, tenor/soprano with vocal chords made of gold (to quote Wilco).
And that's what makes this album stand out from his other "recent" studio releases, JEFF (2003) and YOU HAD IT COMING (2001). There's not much rock/fusion or electronica here. Instead, he's taken things to a new place, fully mining a type of guitar music he merely touched upon in the late '90s with his emotional recordings of "Amazing Grace" and "A Day in the Life."
It is Beck fronting a huge orchestra -- and the results are magical.
Best example? His take on Puccini's "Nessun Dorma" is brilliant, full of drama and energy (The translation from the Italian, No one sleeps -- or none shall sleep, is fitting). Right up there with it is "Corpus Christi Carol," "Over the Rainbow" and Dario Marianelli's sad "Elegy for Dunkirk."
I've already written about Beck's brilliant solo on "I Put a Spell On You," calling it the archetypal brief, semi-weird, minor-key guitar solo for this tempo, this key, this beat. Like the design of the Fender Stratocaster, the solo is perfect, and it couldn't possibly be improved upon.
Another brilliant solo -- which totally took me by surprise -- comes at around the three-minute mark in "Lilac Wine" (It arrived just as I was about to jump ahead to the next song). It is subtle, very long, has some impressive speed and a tone that's unique from the rest of the album. It is a jazz-fusion solo -- something that makes you stop and think, "Geez, this is the same guy who played the fuzz guitar riff in 'Heart Full of Soul' 45 years ago!"
How can these notes -- or any of the notes on EMOTION & COMMOTION -- have been played by that skinny Yardbird guy who was famous when "I Dream of Jeannie" was still being filmed in black and white?
Just another reminder that Beck is always changing, always getting better, always making age a nonfactor.
P.S.: Be sure to play "Hammerhead" good and loud!