Forgotten series: Eric Clapton – Pilgrim (1998)

“Pilgrim” — Eric Clapton’s first album of original material since 1989′s “Journeyman” — was, on its face, a sharp, brave attempt at modernizing the guitarist’s core sound.

You hear solid licks situated amongst the prevailing R&B production values of today — keyboards and drum programming, both swirling orchestrations and smooth female backing vocals, these car-frame rattling bass beats.

But the album was much more than that. “Pilgrim” is, save for “Layla,” the most intimate, starkly honest recording Clapton has issued so far. This 1998 effort sounds, both in texture and approach, nothing like the restless Clapton’s previous personas as comfy 1990s acoustic-blues throwback, perfectly coifed 1980s MOR rocker, calm and collected 1970s balladeer or frenzied 1960s rock experimentalist.

So, of course, “Pilgrim” tanked. His show that year at the Louisiana Superdome, a venue in this town tailor-made for an artist of Clapton’s breadth and depth, was curtained off to one-third of its expanse to create a sense of intimacy out of the faltering ticket sales.

Funny thing is, Clapton actually sounded better in a smaller space. On the minor hit “My Father’s Eyes,” we find a wounded Clapton “praying for the healing rain to restore my soul again” — referencing both his lost parental relationship but also the son who fell to his death in 1991.

Moments like these made “Pilgrim,” introspective, ambitious and now entirely overlooked, into a lost classic of romantic proportions.

Fully engaged in a way we hadn’t heard since his collaboration with Duane Allman on the Derek and the Dominoes release from nearly three decades before, Clapton wrote or co-wrote all but two songs on “Pilgrim.” (The others are Bob Dylan‘s “Born in Time” and an old blues called “Going Down Slow” by St. Louis Jimmy.)

Co-producer Simon Climie helped Clapton create a new template along the way, one that had less to do with Muddy Waters than it did Al Green. He pushed himself to places few would have guessed after a period of largely unsatisfying work with Phil Collins and on movie soundtracks, then a mainstream backtrack with the MTV “Unplugged” recording.

That’s best heard on the title track from “Pilgrim,” featuring the most shatteringly raw vocal work yet for Clapton — a steadfast sideman who long refused to take centerstage and, when he did, often sounded timid or rote at the mic.

Not here. Clapton — synthesizing everything that is special about Curtis Mayfield‘s work — presents himself for the first time not as guitar god, but as bone-deep soul singer: “How do I choose, where do I draw the line, between truth and necessary pain,” Clapton pleads, “and how do I know, and where do I get my belief, that things will be alright again?”

The album is buoyed by other, just as moving ruminations on lost love and lost moments, including “River of Tears,” the grinding “One Chance” and “Circus,” about an outing Clapton took before his son’s passing — the tragedy that became an inspiration for his emotional hit “Tears In Heaven” from six years before. Clapton, the vocalist, can be heard reaching for elements of Stevie Wonder and Junior Wells, crooning, barking and yowling his way to a series of rare and personal moments.

There are times, of course, when Clapton’s sweeping ambition fails him. Most balked at the record’s modernity. Not every song works. In this context, for instance, the skiffle-influenced “Fall Like Rain” somehow felt out of place. But “Pilgrim” actually goes deeper than “Unplugged” and the 1994 covers album “From the Cradle” could have imagined — traveling in a brilliant way past poignancy into true sorrow.

“Pilgrim,” even with the synths, is Clapton’s truest, best blues record.