For Earth Below: Robin Trower Chrysalis L 35421

Reviewed by Pat O'Dea.

Third lime around, Robin Trower continues flashing out his persona as Dr Hendrix, the Seventies disciple of — perhaps the master virtuoso of — the electric guitar, who trims his improvisation and polishes his delivery to get the message through to the rockers. Trower's seduction is direct and uncompromising in its love for past styles, and he lets us know where he stands from the start.

Trower brings to this album the enthusiasm of earlier efforts while backing away from their cluttered production modes. This should not, however, be construed as meaning his music is simple; quite the reverse, in, fact, and at times suprisingly so. Robin Trower, the entity, includes as a singer a veteran from the now defunct Stone the Crows, James Dewar. His vocals are mixed up, thereby eliminating the major problem that plagued earlier recording, while Trower's guitar work focuses more on originality (within, of course, the already-defined limitation) and less on re-hashed variants of the electric guitar man's licks. His love of pure rocking and taste for the vertiginou feel Hendrix sometimes evoked — as opposed to merely ripping off his ideas — are more completely realised, resulting in a thoroughly unified album that enables Trower to transcend the imitative category.

The group's nucleus includes Trower on guitar. Bill Lordan on drums and Dewar on bass and vocals. Fellow refugee from Procul Harum's elephantine excesses, Mathew Fisher, produced; and Trower himself draws widely from the sonic spectrum built up during his tenure with that group. He turns in a searing wah-wah solo on "Fine Day", the album's only neo-rock-&-roll-blues fusion attempt. Like the other players, Trower acquits himself exceptionally well, tempering his playing to let Dewar's vocals remain in the foreground.

Dewar remains prime mover, his eclecticism in bass styles against his low-keyed, almost conversational singing style. His singing is as changed as any other element and works towards a half-singing, half-rapping tone that is particularly effective on his side of life, mand-in-the-street (shades of Gimme Shelter rather than Space Waltz) exercises like "Althea", "Confessin' Midnight" and "For Earth Below", a classic tale of a "fine, fine friend of mine" done in by his penchant for pretty women.

The project hangs together with the unforced lyricism and humour than buoyed the best moments of his earlier woork — a Salty Dog's 'The Devil Come From Kansas" and Broken Barricades "Song for a Dreamer". I do have minor reservations concerning the lyrics, some of which seem to me in need of polishing. Overall, I find the album remarkably consistent. The hard, crisp tone of the playing is reinforced by the clarity of the producotion, handled by Fisher and engineer/collaborator at the Los Angeles Record Plant, Gary Ladinsky.