Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
There are times in life when Time and Emotion are necessary answers to the question, What Was I Really Worth To You?, in the case of the audience and musician relationship there should be only one reply but it is one that can be disguised by arrogance and the dismissive thought of when one or the other once cool partners becomes disheartened by the appeal or the pre-requisite of love.
It has never been a label that can be placed in front of the legendary Robin Trower, a guitarist of panache, style and god-like status, the relationship between fan and musician is almost insurmountable in its demand for the music to be as sweet as the first bird song of dawn or the feeling of being cleansed after walking through the dusty plains. Time and Emotion is the answer that both parties involved in the fair and frank exchange of music and adoration should be quoting and in Robin Trower’s latest release, Time is well so well spent that it develops its own currency and emotion is not just felt but is overwhelmingly pure.
Time cannot be held back, the longer you play the game, the more important it is to truly get down what you want to get across without fuss and with insight. Mr. Trower is such a man to look Time in the eye and suggest to it that no matter how quickly it sends round that second hand, no matter how fast the beat of the short stubby one that idles by for sixty minutes at a time, nothing can stop the power of the velvet glove that makes riffs sound like the sun rising somewhere on the Eastern horizon after a night of gentle rain has washed the streets down.
The beauty of the album is in Robin Trower himself, there has never been the need for the sense of the exhibition because the guitar is alive and full of blaze and fire and in tracks such as the aforementioned What Was I Really Worth To You?, Bitten By The Snake, Can’t Turn Back The Clock, Return in Kind and I’m Gone, Time and Emotion is the only answer that means anything, for in the end all the money in the world cannot purchase either of them and that old devil named love.
Robin Trower’s Time and Emotion is released on August 4th Via Manhaton Records.
Robin Trower’s only U.K. appearance this year is at the Islington Assembly Hall on Wednesday 29th November 2017.
Ian D. Hall