Throughout a career that has spanned five decades, from the Yardbirds to solo stardom, landing him in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, guitarist Jeff Beck has continued to defy expectations. Steadfastly refusing to bow to convention, or even to straightjacket his performances into any critical pigeonhole, Beck’s sound is continuously in flux, skipping like a stone across a pond, dancing with hard rock, blues, jazz, and even flirting with the metallic.
It should come as no surprise, then, that listeners should expect no break from tried-n-true Beck tradition with Emotion & Commotion. Beck’s first studio album since 2003’s electronica-tinged Jeff, and a logical follow-up to the guitarist’s critically-acclaimed 2008 release Performing This Week...Live At Ronnie Scott’s, the breathtaking Emotion & Commotion is a typically solid collection of inspired instrumental tracks, with a few vocal performances sprinkled throughout to keep you on your toes. Since Beck himself won’t sing, he brought in a talented trio of female vocalists to bring a little soul to these songs.
Jeff Beck’s Emotion & Commotion
Emotion & Commotion opens with "Corpus Christi Carol," a weeping instrumental that Beck heard the late singer/songwriter Jeff Buckley cover. With a sweeping soundtrack, the song's lush arrangement and the guitarist's mournful guitar lines not only capture Buckley's original intent in interpreting the song, but raise it to an emotionally ephemeral level. By turns, Beck's original "Hammerhead" is a symphonic prog-rock masterpiece that evokes Robert Fripp and King Crimson with its wiry fretwork and heavy rhythmic backdrop, courtesy of bassist Tal Wilkenfeld. With an orchestra backing his play, Beck turns in a masterful performance as both a guitarist and bandleader, his solos soaring and stinging with intense brutality.
In what might be the oddest song for a guitarist to cover, Beck leads the orchestra through a melancholy instrumental reading of "Over The Rainbow" from the classic Wizard of Oz film. Although this might not be every listener's cuppa, Beck's playing is quite sublime and in such great tone that you can imagine the well-worn vocals playing in your head. He comes back down to earth with a swamp-blues cover of Screamin' Jay Hawkins R&B gem "I Put A Spell On You." With Joss Stone delivering a fine vocal performance that manages to capture a large portion of the original's gritty soul, Beck lays down fine, bluesy guitar lines that scream at you from the song's hoodoo darkness.
Joss Stone, Imelda May & Olivia Safe
Beck returns to his Jeff Buckley albums for the atmospheric "Lilac Wine." With vocals from Irish jazz singer Imelda May, her languid tones envelope the lyrics while Beck's instrument creates a thick emotional space behind May that is supplemented by the orchestra's subtle symphonic vibe. Stone returns for a second time with the powerful "There's No Other Me," an interesting fusion of soul, blues, and jazz that feature's the British singer's best vocal purrs and growls. Beck blasts his bluesy six-string shred above a textured, rhythmic background that could best be called jazz-rock fusion overdrive. The resulting performance is bluesy, blustery, and easily stands among Beck's best work.
Emotion & Commotion closes with a final symphonic number, the beautiful "Elegy For Dunkirk." Featuring opera singer Olivia Safe, the song is a pastoral composition that reminds of classicist Vaughan Williams' work, with Beck's strong but flexible guitarplay woven into the fabric of the orchestral background. Safe's vocals are not what we'd recognize as pop singing but are rather part of the same musical fabric, her soaring voice lifting now and then above the accompanists as another lead instrument.
The Reverend’s Bottom Line
Truthfully, you won't find much blues music on Emotion & Commotion, except for the scraps that Beck has managed to weld in at the edges of many of the songs. Representing yet another musical swerve in the lengthy and often times maddening career of one of rock's premiere guitarists, Beck utilizes the orchestra as a master conductor, embroidering his wandering fretwork in between the other stringed instruments to great effect.
Although blues fans may be somewhat turned off, Emotion & Commotion is a fine album containing an imaginative and innovative blend of rock, blues, pop, jazz, and even classical music. If you'd like to challenge your preconceptions of what a guitarist can achieve with their instrument, I'd highly recommend the album...try it, you won't be disappointed! (Atco/Rhino Records, released April 12, 2010)
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