aaamusic | On 18, Sep 2011

Trombone Shorty is definitely one of the more bizarre acts that has been thrown my way this year.  Often a man in the background, he can boast playing the opening night of the New Orleans Superdrome show with U2 & Green Day, appearing alongside Lenny Kravitz during his world tour and even recording with Eric Clapton for his upcoming album.  An impressive CV certainly, however his solo work doesn’t live up to the same billing.

Trombone Shorty’s album isn’t bad by any means, in fact tracks like Do To Me have a lot of promise, particularly because the trombone isn’t the focal point of the track.  The tracks without lyrics are where the album becomes tedious and tends to blend into one almighty jam session.  The song For True is the sort of instrumental that would be more suited to a live audience,  whereas on an LP it becomes another tedious three minutes of trombonin’ instead of an eclectic mixture of sounds like it was intended to be.

There is a market and a fanbase that will enjoy Trombone Shorty’s work, however mainstream music fans will shun his Jazz album simply because of his lyricless songs.  Had Shorty added a few more guest vocalists we could have been talking about a real surprise package of 2011, but alas this is not the case and his album sits in amongst the numerous other pieces of music produced this year as simply an average and mediocre release.

 

Author: Tom Crowther