In which Lord Ashtar reviews the new Jonny Lang album

This is my first attempt at writing a review of an album. If this one is well received, then I might consider doing a review for more of the CDs I buy in the near future.

Jonny Lang’s new album, Long Time Coming, certainly has been. It’s his first new material in about five years, and I have been anxiously waiting for it. Sure, he’s a blues prodigy. He’s been playing the guitar and singing like a man in his 70’s since he was 13. I first heard about him when he was doing a live performance in Disney World at age 15. My father and I were watching this, and we both loved it, which is amazing if you consider that we almost never see eye-to-eye on music. But as good as he sounds, he wasn’t doing a whole lot of his own material. Until now. Almost every song on the album was written by him, and I’m liking his songwriting skills.

It seems that the time he spent in college the last few years has done great things for his music. The first track, Give Me Up Again, simply blew me away. You can almost see him in your mind’s eye singing this to the girl who broke his heart.

Track #5, Touch, starts off with an addictive R&B beat, only adding some piano for the chorus. My first thought when I heard this song was that some rapper out there will isolate and steal the beat of this song.

The title track and final song on the album is just Jonny and an acoustic guitar in one take. His singing and playing are so passionate, you can hear him running out of breath near the end of the song.

My CD also has a bonus track, a live cover of Livin’ For the City by Stevie Wonder. A nice addition to the album.

All in all, I’d give this album 3.5 out of 4 stars. An excellent blues album from someone who I hope will be around for a long, long time. I just wish he wouldn’t make me wait so long between albums. :wink:

Holy Cow are we on different ends of the scale. I almost cried when I heard this album. I had waited years to hear some more of Jonny’s raw guitar and vocals.

This album still delivers the raw vocals but the music is polished up and “studio-ized” like a damn Back-Street-Boys album. On each song you hear yet another post production studio effect thrown in.

I’m guessing that he was atttempting to use polished instrumental tracks to offset and accent his raw voice. But there are times within almost every track where the gap is too wide and his vocals sound as if a drunk was blabbering into the microphone.

I agree with you that the Stevie Wonder cover is a gem but I must admit that I’m looking forward to the next Jonny Lang CD in hopes that he corrects all the mistakes he made on this one.

The good news is that he’s young and still has a lot more music in him. I’ll keep this CD in rotation in order to enjoy those brief moments where he sounds linke the real Jonny but man this is destined to be my least loved LAng CD.

Bubba

I’ve only heard “Red Light” on the radio, and I could’ve sworn it was Eddie Money until the DJ enlightened me after the song.

It sounds exactly like Eddie Money, and that’s not a good thing.

He’s got a radio single? What station was it?