You’d expect a furious groove, not to mention various guitar pyrotechnics, when guys like Randy Bachman and Peter Frampton get together — as on the earlier previewed title track from Bachman’s forthcoming Heavy Blues. Insert Neil Young in the mix, however, and there’s the possibility of something more acoustic, more plaintive, more down to earth.
Or not. Instead, there’s this: “Little Girl Lost,” a scroungy groover in the tradition not of Neil Young’s country-swaying Harvest album but of his garage-rattling Crazy Horse projects.
A restive figure, Neil Young actually helps keep Heavy Blues (due April 14, 2015 via Linus Entertainment) rattling along like a muscle car with a bad muffler. That is to say, Randy Bachman has created a gruff trio sound that is insistent, consumptive, and full of just as much bad-ass attitude as billowing smoke.
When “Little Girl Lost” finally takes a breath, near the very end, Randy Bachman lets out a happy grunt, and then another — connecting this track spiritually with the monstrous riff of his earlier “American Woman” with the Guess Who. And then, just as quickly as it topped the hill, “Little Girl Lost” is gone again.
All that’s left is the slight whiff of exhilarating ozone.
- Nick DeRiso’s Best of 2015 (Rock + Pop): Death Cab for Cutie, Joe Jackson, Toto + Others - January 18, 2016
- Nick DeRiso’s Best of 2015 (Blues, Jazz + R&B): Boz Scaggs, Gavin Harrison, Alabama Shakes - January 10, 2016
- Nick DeRiso’s Best of 2015 (Reissues + Live): John Oates, Led Zeppelin, Yes, Faces + others - January 7, 2016
