Sonny Landreth is a songwriting craftsman who gives us clever, emotionally truthful little bits of hook-filled roots rock. He’s also one of America’s most talented guitarists. One admission charge, two talents.
The Road We’re On is another two-lane highway of Americana from the man who fueled John Hiatt’s Slow Turning and last year’s The Tiki Bar Is Open. Landreth turns primarily to blues-based songwriting this time, but he’s bringing that tradition into the 21st century. “True Blue” works like a self-help book from the Delta, as Landreth suggests “You got to dig down deep and find strength to shelter you through.” “Natural World” is a cry in the ever-expanding wilderness about man’s inhumanity to nature, filled with unsettling images resonating with both the Bible and the literature of Greenpeace, all set to a powerful ZZ Top-styled rumble.
Landreth revels in the opportunity to expand the vocabulary of blues-guitar traditions. Ten out of twelve tracks feature Landreth’s signature slide guitar style. He sounds like he’s stopping the notes from escaping, as if they could run out of control in an explosion of frantic energy if he didn’t slip on to the next note just in time. Song after song, Landreth leaves the earthly constraints of the form with sharply focused, heaven-bound bursts of guitar brilliance.
Landreth recognizes pain, of course, or else he couldn’t be true to the blues, but he is mostly interested in the way out of it. The Road We’re On is about the road, the escape, the immersion in the giddy pleasures of rhythm & blues.
