1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 129. Traffic – Traffic (1968)
Wikipedia labels this album as “folk rock”, but it’s really not very folky. More funky, to be honest. Maybe it gets classed as folk rock because it features some acoustic instruments like flute and piano, but it also has some of the old psychedelic ingredients, notably organ. The sound is more melodic though, and less grungy, than most psychedelic stuff.
In fact, this is the most Seventies
sounding album yet, much more lightly mixed and sophisticated in sound, which
is probably why it defies an easy pigeon-holing.
I really didn’t write very much about this
album at all, so this is me trying to rectify that by going back and listening
again as I feel I at least ought to highlight a couple of tracks or be a bit
more specific about the album or the band. It feels like a contest between Dave
Mason and the writing team of Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi, with Mason not
really appearing much on the Winwood/Capaldi tracks. You Can All Join In is a
pop-country tune of Mason’s that sounds a little like a children’s tune, so
chirpy is it. The next Mason track, Don’t Be Sad, actually gets better when
Winwood gets involved with the chorus vocals. Feelin’ Alright, however, has a
pleasing soul kind of groove to it and very catchy it is too. Cryin’ To Be
Heard alternates, Nirvana style, between quiet verses and the sudden explosive
loudness of the “Somebody’s cryin’ to be heard” chorus, and sounds a little
like it could have been a Crosby, Stills and Nash song.
Meanwhile, the Capaldi/Winwood songs are
generally more funky in nature, helped perhaps by Winwood’s throaty soulful voice.
The wonderfully named Roamin’ Thro’ The Gloamin’ With 40,000 Headmen is a
psychedelic reverie about a demi-god being hunted, while No Time To Live is
part soul, part psychedelia, but others like Pearly Queen and Means To An End
are upbeat and funky.
Next time we encounter Traffic, Mason has
either left or is in the process of leaving, and so the Winwood/Capaldi sound
prevails; to me it’s the stronger one although the Mason tracks aren’t bad by
any means. They do, however, lack something, which may just be Winwood’s voice.
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