It's unfortunate Cream's bass player Jack Bruce can't undertake the rigors of heavy touring. While his trio remains on the sidelines, he keeps busy the best he can.
The collaboration with guitarist Robin Trower on the studio release Seven Moons will keep those royalty checks coming. Currently touring the U.S., Trower isn't performing material from Seven Moons. He just cranks out the golden oldies and performs half of his landmark album Bridge Of Sighs. For an hour and a half, time stands still as the man can unleash those monstrous Strat tones that had him heralded as the next Jimi Hendrix.
Those same tones inundate Seven Moons into moody pieces of psychedelia having a grounding in the blues. This record could have come out in 1974 and been a musical fixture for teenagers who plastered their bedroom walls with blacklight posters and listened through headphones losing themselves in their own purple haze.
As in his work with Cream, Bruce's bass is turned up in the mix. But Trower isn't lacking in the decibel department or his abilities to color ballads into Hendrixian rainbows. His infamous use of feedback and vibrato are all over this cd, adding tonal quality to the tracks engulfed in smoke of mysticism. His leads are kaleidoscopic lasers in rivers of soul.
With most of the songs written by Trower and Bruce, you can see their willingness to meet at a halfway point. Although he can't be compared to Trower's best vocalist in James Dewar, Jack's vocals complement Robin's guitar work well enough. There is the deep moodiness in "Distant Places of The Heart." The longing for isolation in "Just Another Day." The surrealistic stomp and edginess in "She's Not The One." Bruce's bass drives the track "So Far To Yesterday" smoothly on Trower's bedrock of rhythm. Both gentlemen discover a sly blues groove on "Lives of Clay." That groove turns up in "Bad Case of Celebrity" in which the production is thick as quicksand and becomes slow voodoo menace in "Come To Me" that ends in Trower's tomcat snarl leads.
Both Robin Trower and Jack Bruce are able to collect social security benefits but opt to remain busy. These rock veterans turn in a piece of work that has a special place in the heart for fans who wish to visit the heydays of their youth. It may be a nostalgic trip into yesteryear and surely no multi-million selling cd, but Seven Moons is a fountain of youth for guitar freaks who still want to stay dazed and confused.
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