o read the alarming amount of self-promoting material that accompanies this CD, you'd swear that Eric is the greatest thing since sliced bread. The Unstruck Melody hits us then like a loaf of multi-grain, perhaps. It's a mostly excellent sounding CD with a lot of catchy blues-, jazz-, and classic-rock influenced songs backed by some outstanding guitar work. Kudos to Rusty Hall for outstanding organ playing, and to the rest of the band for providing a great rhythm section.
We recommend ignoring the CD booklet/liner notes for starters and skipping right to playing the CD since you might be falsely mislead into thinking this is an amateur production, when in fact the music is first rate throughout. Filling the CD with quotes alluding to Eric's greatness was a serious turn-off for us - he should have let the music just speak for itself.
Eric's playing is excellent throughout, and fans of vintage guitar tones and musical influences ranging from the Grateful Dead to Eric Johnson (with a heavy dose of classic rock and blues) will find something to latch onto in this collection of songs, some instrumental and some featuring Eric on lead vocals.
There's too much music in this collection, though - at least five of the songs should have been dropped to maintain a more cohesive sound and keep the flow of the album moving along. Slimming down the collection and redoing the album artwork will better enable listeners to take this album for what it is - a great guitar album - rather than come across as something amateurish.
o read the alarming amount of self-promoting material that accompanies this CD, you'd swear that Eric is the greatest thing since sliced bread. The Unstruck Melody hits us then like a loaf of multi-grain, perhaps. It's a mostly excellent sounding CD with a lot of catchy blues-, jazz-, and classic-rock influenced songs backed by some outstanding guitar work. Kudos to Rusty Hall for outstanding organ playing, and to the rest of the band for providing a great rhythm section.