128. Jeff Beck - Truth (July 1968)

1. Shapes of Things*

2. Let Me Love You

3. Morning Dew

4. You Shook Me

5. Old Man River*

6. Greensleeves

7. Rock My Plimsoul

8. Beck's Bolero*

9. Blues De Luxe

10. I Ain't Superstitious

B

With the title "Truth", and that arty cover, one could be forgiven for expecting something strange and mystical. Instead, this is mostly a straight blues album, although a very well-performed one. Jeff Beck is a great guitarist (at this point in the List, I'd rank him second only to Hendrix), and the rest of the band are great, too. Rod Stewart provides vocals, and while he obviously hasn't quite found his voice at this point, there are glimmers of the guy who'd eventually unleash "Maggie May" on an unsuspecting populace. 

Really, the amount of talent present here can't help result in the album being a bit of a let down. "Shapes of Things" is an amazing, exciting opener, somehow mixing the Who at their most anthemic with British Blues and pointing the way forward for 70s rock. But at the same time there's a gentler, I guess more feminine quality that means that songs like "Old Man River" and "Greensleeves" don't seem out of place. And then there's the instrumental "Beck's Bolero", which just flat out rocks.

But then the rest of the album is just, you know, old blues songs. Well-performed blues songs, I guess (the sound of this album is gorgeous), but nothing to get excited about. It doesn't really help that the group take bog-standard blues, trick it out with a bunch of new-fangled studio techniques, and then have Rod Stewart sing it even though he's not really suited to the material. In attempting to update the sound of the blues, they rob it of the vitality that made it work in the first place. 

These are all personal gripes, though. If you like British blues then this is a fine album (certainly a hell of a lot better than that Bluesbreakers album we had a while back). And there are a few really great songs here. I just don't much care for this sort of music. And why call an album "Truth", when the truth you're telling is "Oh baby you shook me", or "When you walk, you shake like a willow tree"? Plus that piano solo on "Blues De Luxe" sucks so hard I took a point off just for it. 

Anyway, your mileage may vary.