Is it wrong that I am keeping my Steve Winwood solo albums but blue-binning one of his albums with Traffic? Probably not, as When the Eagle Flies was not met with critical acclaim, so should hardly be taken to be representative of the band's peak. Still, the main element that drew me to his much cheesier-sounding solo records was his gift for pop melody, and that is largely absent here. This album consists of largely mid-tempo jazz/blues jamming and sounds cool enough, but subsists at level of pleasant mediocrity. The only song that really caught my ear was "Dream Gerrard," with a cool piano riff, but that one also happens to be 11 minutes long and repeats that riff over and over again. I admit that it is harder for me to judge this kind of music (mostly instrumental) on one listen, so the critical derision this one met with makes me have fewer reservations about dumping this record. But on a basic level, my main criterion for rating is whether something stood out about an album. A lot of albums sound fine, but don't actively engage me either. This one is in that category.
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