Album Review: RF Shannon’s Trickster Blues Mellows You Awake
My favorite quality of RF Shannon’s Trickster Blues is that is sounds so tired. Let me explain. There are moments when we feel so exhausted we simply lay out, and let what ever thought or feeling enter our mind. Trickster Blues’ uses 70’s soul/R&B and western- desert blues to sojourn you with its mellowness, and inspire you with music that shows your mind excited when your body exhausts.
“I’m Only Dying”, “Badlands”, and “Silver Woman” radiates like the sun tanning/sweating your skin as you lie under its rays. You almost feel immobilized by RF Shannon’s lissome vocality. He simply bends and beams his voice over you so that you no longer have to think: he will do it for you. If anything, his vocality is as soothing and static as radio waves molding your thoughts. The good thing is the only thought he wishes to inject is self-awareness, and a feeling that the consideration you hand others is reflective of how you consider yourself.
“Cold Spell”, “Gates of Paradise”, and “Tooth Ache” show reflection is function. As guitar melodies either revive in twinges or relax in twilighted chords, their pulsing nature breezes through the back-roads of living. How friendships become romances, how dreams become realities, and how careers become life-courses are all dependent on the “side-roads”/ choices taken. For RF Shannon, destiny is not exactly a “major”, apparent road as much as an amassing of side-streets that are encompassed in the winding arrangements of his instrumentals.
“Back-roads” os a symbolic concept in RF Shannon’s Trickster Blues. Yet, it has a double meaning: “back-roads” often show you hidden beauties you otherwise would not have seen on the “main course”, but it is uncertain whether they slow or fasten you to your destination. In his new record, RF Shannon is trying to be vastly simply, yet ruminates on the complexity of feeling like life is as much fated as it is invented. For More Information On RF Shannon And To Buy Trickster Blues On May 4 Click Here.
