Shane’s Music Challenge: STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN & DOUBLE TROUBLE – 1985 – Soul To Soul

Shane | 25 February 2014 | Reply

Shane’s Music Challenge: STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN & DOUBLE TROUBLE – 1985 – Soul To Soul
5.5/10

The Texan blues guitarist & singer’s third studio record, Soul To Soul contains everything that you might expect from a SRV album – but it lacks the very thing celebrated in the title, soul.

Blame touring exhaustion, blame the pressure of stardom after two highly celebrated albums that revived the blues around the world, or blame an escalating dependency on cocaine and booze, but Soul To Soul, whilst enjoyable enough, seems in hindsight like a pastiche – SRV by numbers.

Opening wah-wah-filled instrumental Say What! nods the cap to Booker T & The MGs, Lookin’ Out The Window and Look At Little Sister are pretty standard blues rockers, but it’s only the heartfelt Ain’t Gone N Give Up On Love and a heart-wrenchingly emotional cover of Doyle Bramhall’s Change It that are good enough to stand with his best work.