Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Don’t let the full stop fool you, a poem is never truly finished, it just waits to evolve, to have the writer look up from the implement of their trade and the Muse of their desires and contemplate adding a line that has just struck them, as inspiration is apt to do, at the advent of a monumental moment in time.
Anniversaries, notable ones, are there for reflection, and a gift, and the finest of those are the ones that look upon the event being honoured and celebrated and with their own mind see a way to comment upon, perhaps even improve the initial moment.
Trouble Is…25, and a hell of reflection, and whether a classic could ever be said to develop further beyond its initial expanse is not up for debate, but the sense of delivery, the finesse of the songs, the detailed observation of the album at large, they are all caught in the belief that stones can be reshaped and reformed, and so quite rightly can an album of high integrity.
When you are 18, as Kenny Wayne Shepherd was when he released Trouble Is in 1997, you are on top of the world, you are the king of your own domain, and that is perfectly acceptable, that is the right of youth to be so assured in your passion; and yet it is with time that we seek out the reassurance of that belief, and hope that your thoughts have, like the stone altered by storms, tempests, by the constant buffering of winds and squalls, not only been resilient, but been given the chance to look different…the dichotomy of youth and middle age, still a radical, but one that wants to see time move on with honest appraisal.
It is the intervening 25 years that shows the experience of the piece, that tracks such as True Lies, Everything Is Broken, I Found Love (When I Found You), King’s Highway, Rainbow, and Ballad Of A Thin Man simultaneously retain their youthful pleasure and idealism, and have grown in depth to mean something more to the listener.
It is perhaps in that moment that the listener realises that it is not so much about the artist, but their own time, that 25 years is as much about self-discovery and reflection for them, and how the winds of change have tempered their own outlook on the past.
Trouble Is…25 is a powerful reminder of Time, and how music, how art can bring different emotions to the mind at certain stages in life; whether you are 18 or staring into the middle distance of life, art, a song can mean the same thing and yet have a completely different effect. Such is the legacy of Kenny Wayne Shepherd; it is no wonder that the album still retains sensitive and emotive response.
Kenny Wayne Shepherd release Trouble Is…25 on December 2nd via Provogue Records/Mascot Label.
Ian D. Hall