Bamalama

Chronique

After Pugh Rogefeldt disbanded Rainrock, he set out to explore American music, and on this trip he abandoned the hard rock he'd been trying on a few albums for a more country-oriented sound with slide guitars and an occasional New Orleans piano. The recordings took place in 1976, first in Muscle Shoals Sounds in Alabama, then in Hollywood, and finally in Stockholm in the autumn. Hearing the result, a suspicion creeps to mind that there was no real plan behind the trip, or actually behind the whole album. A number of the songs included are clearly substandard, with the worst first: the embarrassing tribute song "Bo Diddley." And only in a few songs is Rogefeldt able to use the country influences in a meaningful way, two of these being "Vår kommunale Man," a brilliant translation and rewriting of Woody Guthrie's "Vigilante Man," and the gospel oozing "Hällregn," where he finally gets a chance to weather his voice. But most songs linger somewhere in between country ideas, pop melodies, and session musicians influenced by funk without ever seeing a good fusion of these components. And while a great number of the musicians involved do a decent job, there is often no big correspondence between Rogefeldt's singing and the backing. There are exceptions to this, but the three best tracks are all covers, and on two of them Rogefeldt plays slide guitar and sings all by himself.

© Lars Lovén /TiVo