What I genuinely love about virtually every picture you find of Trower actually playing, rather than just a pose, is that he is pulling his guitar-empathy face, a synchronized contortion to that brilliant brooding tone of his: the stasis or languid waver of held feedback. Those of us nearly as brilliant on air guitar can, however, match perfectly those pursed lips and tightly shut eyes.
This latest album is steeped very much in Trower's blues groove. The guitar work seems easy to dismiss by paradoxically waxing lyrical about how it obviously lives up immediately to our expectations. As if it just happens. And any song will do to exemplify: take track 6 What You Never Want to Do where the straight blues guitar wails its emotions, and the next Strange Love, a slower blues where that wail is inserted in emotive clips like checks on the feelings - holding it in - until, and we know it is coming, the cry is allowed to exhale and gently tug at our own heartstrings.
This is a subdued record overall, and all the more mature for that confidence to let it hold the mood, Trower's own singing stepping up to the blues plate with an assurance perhaps not heard before. I certainly can't wait to hear it all live in Birmingham on the 28th of this month, both our faces, no doubt, doing the rounds.
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