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.