bringing in the 70s aor vocal style, ala robin trower or eric clapton or something, is definitely not my cup of, err, tea. but, that's apparently not their normal style. they're normally instrumental, so i checked out the previous record...
this is just a collection of stale cliches strung together, with a bunch of bland, unimaginative guitar work pasted over top of it. i guess you'd have to call this grandpa rock at this point, because your dad probably wouldn't like it, either.
again: if you don't actually play guitar, you might be mightily impressed by all of the sound coming at you, but the reality is that it's exceedingly boxed in. there are rules to playing blues guitar that have to do with phrasing and notes, and the genius of the player comes out in how they break and bend and skirt around those rules. whether you're talking about a ridiculous, unserious player like hendrix or a stuffy, composer like robert fripp, it's always about the flair that comes with getting out of the box. this appears to make no attempt to do that - it's content to follow the rules to the letter, and more or less perfectly. the result is a record that sounds exactly the way it's supposed to sound, without creating any kind of musical tension, at all.
again: if you just want somebody to play messy pentatonic notes relatively fast (not too fast,though), this should do it for you. but, there's nothing else really to it and, as an abstract guitarist, i will forgive you for finding it boring - because it largely is.
