Vernon Reid constantly dazzles with his astonishing technique. From his days with
Living Colour and his collaborations with
Bill Frisell, to
Mistaken Identity,
his first solo album, he has demonstrated that he can play vast array
of styles and licks, as well as considerable ambition. In addition to
being a skilled guitarits,
Reid
is a musical theorist and he likes nothing better than consciously
mixing genres, creating unique, unpredictable fusions. Unfortunatley,
these hybirds work better in theory than they do in practice, as
Mistaken Identity proves.
Reid
can play everything from hip-hop and reggae to jazz, funk and rock, but
he has problems uniting these disparate strands into a cohesive whole.
Too often, he relies on his instrumental skill to hide his lack of
compositional skills -- not one of the songs on the album makes an
impression as a
song, only as an instrumental showcase. And,
for anyone but guitar players, a ceaseless series of solos gets a little
tiresome after a while. For those guitar fanatics, however,
Mistaken Identity is well worth a listen.
aCá
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