Peter Wolf: Sleepless : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Peter Wolf's sixth solo album is easily his best: A superb work of soulfulness and delicacy, it will hold enormous appeal for any fan of Van Morrison or Bob Dylan, two of Wolf's bedrock fellow travelers. Crucially, Sleepless features two of Dylan's regular sidemen in Wolf's studio unit. These craftsmen, guitarist Larry Campbell and bassist Tony Garnier, demonstrate the subtle interplay and solid grooves that come from years of playing together. Wolf's session band surrounds and supports his gentle ballads with exceptional nuance. They exchange vocal lines and instrumental retorts in lilting, lyrical and heart-tugging trade-offs.

Sleepless is a sleeper -- a clean and sparely produced album of hand-polished gems. Wolf's thoughtful delivery and the band's deft ensemble work, so commanding in its understatement, give such songs as "Growin' Pain" and "Sleepless" their simmering power. They lock into a tight Memphis-soul groove on "A Lot of Good Ones Gone," wherein Wolf expresses loss commingled with the will to persevere. He wraps his warmest, most affectionate vocal around "Hey Jordan," a sweet, shuffling ballad. Wolf and Mick Jagger -- how's that for a summit meeting? -- join forces on "Nothing But the Wheel," a righteously ragged duet whose countryish overtones evoke the Rolling Stones' "Sweet Virginia." Keith Richards adds stinging guitar licks on "Too Close Together," a romping jump blues by Sonny Boy Williamson.

Sleepless is a tributary and reflective record, tapping into a lifetime's passion for old-school R&B, blues, country and reggae. On "Oh Marianne," Wolf even delves into the graceful, Latin-inflected pop of the Drifters era with masterful results. The album's gorgeous, bittersweet aura is perfectly summarized in a couplet from this song: "Life is a dead-end street/Oh, but the music's sweet." And it doesn't get much sweeter than Sleepless.