Steve Miller Band: Fly Like An Eagle : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Fly like an Eagle may be the most complete and effective musical statement Steve Miller has ever made, Always enigmatic, always eclectic, Miller's albums have usually been ill-fitting jigsaw puzzles, but in this latest album he puts all of his cards on the table, face up. The result is a full house of rock & roll.

As usual, Miller taps various genres such as the blues and straightforward rock, and, as usual, he's lyrically preoccupied with mental and physical space. He pieces it all together with surprising simplicity.

A measure of how skillfully the songs have been constructed and arranged is the absence of any riff-based guitar solos. The approach here is raw, with rhythm guitar, bass and drums so completely to the point that a hot, flashy solo would seem gratuitous. In this context, the diversity of an album which contains the jaunty, pop-styled "Take the Money and Run," the three-chord bliss of "Rock'n Me" and two riveting blues numbers, "Mercury Blues" and "Sweet Maree" (the latter neatly enhanced by James Cotton's harmonica) is that much more impressive.

There are echoes from the past in "Serenade," a long, hypnotic track propelled by Gary Mallaber's tense, smart drumming, "Wild Mountain Honey," with its swirling electric sitar strains, and the dreamlike "The Window." I've never doubted that Steve Miller could do anything he wanted musically. On Fly like an Eagle, he does more than I could ever hope to ask for.