1/25/2024 0 Comments Traffic sound band![]() The album has some pretty good moments, the title track is stand-able and features one of those super-filtered guitar solos from Winwood at the end of the song. Even with their presence though, it's undoubtedly primarily Capaldi and Winwood doing the work. Mick Dolan and Davy Spillane appear as newcomers to the band, on rhythm guitar and Uilleann pipes (a type of Irish bagpipe) respectively. Capaldi, who I know is a great drummer, is restricted within this genre with slow, linear drum patterns that rarely shift from their solid mold. However after spending the 80's successful with just using the latter, Winwood's over-enthusiastic yell became the centerpiece of the vocal arrangements. Winwood's vocals in their early stages were quiet, yet when required were able to belt out power notes. Funnily enough this album features some of Traffic's longest tracks, which have little-to-no experimentation in them. The album is over-saturated, much like Winwood's albums, with harmonized synth keyboards, slow echoing drumming, and soul backing vocals. Far From Home, in layman's terms, is a glorified Steve Winwood solo album, the only difference being that drummer Jim Capaldi from the original lineup joined him on it. If every element of the band was removed, then what exactly was left? Nothing particularly remarkable. FFH was a complete overhaul of Traffic's sound, demolishing the eclectic folk influence, the progressive construction, and any semblance of what made Traffic Traffic. This is especially the case when an album is such a flash-fire like Far From Home was (the band released and nothing subsequently). To me, a comeback album is one that is more of a callback to old material, replicating it slightly but with other sounds and gadgets to make up for weak points. I don't believe that Far From Home should match any of their old albums in the slightest. Now you could say that with such an old band as Traffic, thinking that an album released thirty years after their golden era would be as great as when the band was young is wishful thinking. Was it as great as any of the classics? No, not really. ![]() This was none other than Far From Home, a haphazard assemblage of 90's pop rock and very vague progressive undertones. They went quiet for three decades until in 1994, they released a sudden comeback album out of the blue. Traffic was releasing great material seemingly effortlessly, until that year with When The Eagle Flies, debatably their weakest album of the period. Traffic split up rather early in the seventies (in '74), but at the same time had released a studio album practically every year up to that point since their debut in 1967. The innovative music they cranked out in such an early stage of progressive rock was nigh unparalleled by many other bands. Traffic is by far one of my favorite bands of all time.
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