Walter Trout - Common Ground

release date: 5 Jul 2010 // label: Provogue 
reviewer: Andy Snipper

Twenty years a solo star and somehow Trout keeps on developing his art and growing in stature. This is well up there with his best work and, frankly, he sounds more confident and happier with his music than he has in a while.

He has now gotten together with the mighty Kenny Aronoff on drums – Aronoff has previous duties with the likes of John Mellencamp, Elton John and John Fogerty – and Jon Cleary on keys and piano who is/was part of Bonnie Raitt’s band as well as a solo career. Hutch Hutchinson continues on bass and John Porter produced it all as he has produced Walter for some time.
A lot of artists, this far into their career, would assemble a band of this quality and hide behind them, take it easy and let the band do the work; not Walter Trout. The songs are classic working mans Blues with passion and power in equal measure but the band have tempered Trout’s rawness with some real class and the end result is brilliant.

Trout’s guitar seems mellower than it sometimes has although there is no loss in sheer belting balls and his voice still has his raw-boned drawl albeit slightly reined in from the bellow he is capable of.
But the album doesn’t sound as though he is holding back, rather that he has finally learned that varying his pace keeps the attention even better than ripping everything out at a blistering pace. Mind, when he does let rip with a big solo you get some of the finest Strat-ripping you are ever going to hear – he can do things that the shredders and speed-freaks can only dream of.

There are a dozen tracks on ‘Common Ground’ and they hardly miss the 5 stars on any of them. The title track is a plea for peace at the ‘Common Ground’, epic in feel and with a hugely satisfying passion in both his vocals and his playing while ‘Danger Zone’ hits the funk line with a huge belt and some great keyboards from Cleary. ‘Loaded Gun’ is a classic Blues/Rock rip-it with the whole team cooking like a Texan Chilli but then you have ‘Song For My Guitar’, a love song to his favourite Strat, softly sung and with a wonderfully overblown lyric – corny as hell but in a really good way. ‘No Regrets’ has all the hallmarks of Walter Trout doing what he does better than anyone else with a massive riff and vocals almost lost behind his axe. The album finishes on ‘Excess Baggage’, one last blast of Trout’s great style and punch.

Any lovers of Blues/Rock will already be familiar with Walter Trout and in the years that he has been visiting the UK & Europe he has built a huge following – last time I saw him live I met three guys from Poland who had seen him every year since before the end of the Soviet Union and a couple of crazy Germans who come to see him in England every tour because they preferred the English fans – and none of them will be surprised at the quality of this album but they might just be a little amazed at the way that he is still developing and still creating new music.

Troutnessabounds and it has never sounded better.
source : http://www.music-news.com/showreview.asp?H=Walter-Trout&nReviewID=6038