Spring '08 LPs From Madonna, Coldplay, The Roots, Mudcrutch, Elvis Costello : Rolling Stone

Steve Winwood

Nine Lives 4/29

In Steve Winwood's old band Traffic, he wrote the music, he says, "as an excuse for us to jam." Nine Lives, his debut for Columbia Records, was written in the same spirit, with the songs born out of jams with his longtime touring band and fleshed out at Winwood's studio in Gloucester, England. "Dirty City" is an escalating, hypnotic opus, featuring Winwood on B-3 organ and a solo by his Blind Faith buddy Eric Clapton; "Fly" sounds like his mellower hits from the Eighties. "I've tried to combine ingredients of Latin music, gospel, bebop, and add them to the folk-rock-jazz elements I've always tried to have," Winwood says. "It becomes a soup, and hopefully it's a tasty soup."