Boz Scaggs: Boz Scaggs & Band : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Boz Scaggs & Band is a clean, natural blend of blues, R&B, rock and country styles with some spicy Latin touches–a pulling together of Scaggs' experience with the Steve Miller Band, Mother Earth and others, but without a hint of false or forced eclecticism. Like Mother Earth, he grasps both country music and rhythm and blues with assurance and ease. Avoiding for the most part those careful but uninspired imitations of, say, R&B form and style that are little more than many performers' clumsy dues-paying, Scaggs prefers to dig to the root feeling of the music and reinterpret it in his own way.

Consequently, his best songs are not framed in any particular style, but they evoke the richness of all his influences–especially the very real emotional qualities of country and R&B–giving his music an unexpected depth. In the same way, Scaggs doesn't affect a gritty snarl or lilting twang in his singing (although he seems naturally closer to the latter). Instead, his voice, slightly raw and wispy around the edges, full of aching, appealing qualities, carries the song unpretentiously and effortlessly. With no sense of pushing for effect or hard-driving intensity in the singing, the songs move in on you gradually, at a relaxed pace, and the total hold they have on you in the end is all the more surprising.

Everything here is fine, but it's side two that I keep coming back to. "Here to Stay," a beautifully liquid love song, begins like a spring morning with vibes, light guitar and a thin curl of electronic sound and opens into a delicate wash of music with just the right touch of Latin percussion. Boz sings, "Lovin' you makes more sense/Than keepin' up/Or payin' rent/Anytime." Scaggs' lyrics are loose, often elusive, not from any failed attempt to be "poetic," but rather, I think, because he lets the ideas drift and flow with the music. A few lines in the second cut, another love song titled "Nothing Will Ever Take Your Place," seem to deal with this: "Thoughts and daydreams fill the air/They fly around like birds/And I can sing you melodies/–Not just sound like words." He can.

"Nothing Will Ever Take Your Place" has a delicacy similar to that of the opening cut, with some fantastic organ work (by Jymm Joachim Young, whose work throughout the album is outstanding) and an especially lovely organ and flute break. But with Boz Scaggs, the impression of delicacy doesn't mean the song dissolves into a soft center of mush; there's more real strength here than on most Heavy Blues albums. The use of horns here and elsewhere is particularly sensitive, avoiding the blaring, sharp edges that stick jaggedly out of so many other bands' work. Production on these two cuts, my favorites, is by Boz Scaggs; Glyn Johns handles the rest with equal precision and flair.

"Why Why" at 5:32 is the longest cut and one of the more blues oriented, chugging along with fine bass, guitar and organ out front, underlining Boz's pleading question, "Why why why must a good love go bad?" Although the vocal cuts out almost half way through, the Band is so tight and so firmly into the song–not slipping off into irrelevant riffs but sticking within a breaking and re-forming pattern–that the attention doesn't drift for a second. The eight-man band, with Scaggs on guitar, is joined by Chepito Areas (timbales) and Mike Carrabello (congas), formerly with Santana, on the side one closer–the hot, Latin-flavored "Flames of Love." Otherwise, they carry the album alone and in fine style; I can't think of a rock band with brass that I've enjoyed as much. A final note: the opening cut, "Monkey Time," is not the Major Lance original but a crazy Boz Scaggs dream/dance song that's almost as much fun. Try it. You'll like it.