The Cry of Love review

Jimi Hendrix's first posthumous album. Before he died, he was working on a new album and some of the songs for that album, his first after The Jimi Hendrix Experience broke up are featured here.

Tracks:

1. Freedom: 7/10 while far from one of his best tracks, Jimi is on good form here and delivers plenty of musical ferocity with confidence and style.

2. Drifting: 8/10 a quiet, minimalistic, smartly written song which shows Jimi isn't just all loud guitar riffs and no soul.

3. Ezy Rider: 8/10 the most entertaining and compelling song yet.

4. Night Bird Flying: 9/10 evoking memories of the psychedelic brilliance from Electric Ladyland, this is another hugely welcome round of wonderfully heavy madness.

5. My Friend: 6/10 a bit meaningless and bland, but it sounds like nothing else Hendrix has ever done and is an interesting song.

6. Straight Ahead: 7/10 it doesn't boast a lot of substance, but it's still good fun.

7. Astro Man: 8/10 it doesn't quite live up to its full potential, but it's weird and entertaining enough to soar to reasonable heights.

8. Angel: 9/10 one of Jimi's most touching and poetic songs.

9. In From the Storm: 8/10 a fairly typical good Jimi Hendrix song: well-written and backed with an excellent guitar instrumental.

10. Belly Button Window: 4/10 the title is weird and stupid. The song follows suite. The guitar is barely even in it.

Best song: Angel
Worst song: Belly Button Window

Summary: This is a good posthumous album. It's certainly not Jimi Hendrix's best album and the songs don't showcase him at his best, but they showcase his talents reasonably effectively and at its best the album is very strong. The songs are also diverse and aren't all just the same, and this is a pretty entertaining album overall, though it's not definitive.




Final rating: 8/10