(click on the play button at right to listen to this review along with music from the album)

Cars and guitars. That’s a simple summation of Jeff Beck. Listen to his music though and there’s no simple description. On this album due out April 13, he defies category by mixing it up with orchestral sounds (the real deal 64 piece AND synth simulated). There are originals and covers. There are girls. And then there’s those fingers on that strat. No need for a pick when you’re Jeff Beck.

Jeff Beck has come back into view these past few years with Grammy wins, his 2009 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, tours both solo and with Clapton, the cover story WITH Clapton in a recent issue of Rolling Stone Mag, a feature in Vintage Guitar Magazine…yes Beck is back. And he seems to be enjoying himself.

EMOTION AND COMMOTION is his first studio album in seven years and brilliant punctuations of sound are all over it. That’s his virtuosity….using his guitar as a voice rather than noodling up and down a neck. The original inspiration for this record actually goes all the way back to the 70’s and an idea sparked by then producer George Martin to do a full blown classical record. That was a bit too ambitious for Jeff to think of at the time but a decade or two down the road, he heard Mahler’s 5th Symphony (which he did end up recording). And then he heard ELEGY from the Atonement soundtrack. Although he wasn’t ready to commit to an entire classical undertaking, he WAS ready to approach the idea of orchestration. On this record, Beck mixes it up stylistically. You get some standards (Over the Rainbow) and you get opera (Puccini’s Nesssun Dorma). You get bluesy Joss Stone (I Put a Spell on You) and you get the delightful jazzy Imelda May on a couple of numbers. And you get a couple of Beck originals too.

I didn’t know what to expect when I first listened to this album, and I must admit that at first listen, I kept thinking where’s the rock? At times, I heard echoes of Pat Metheny. But even with the territorial wandering and orchestration, it’s STILL Jeff Beck and that alone is cause for joy. He’s the guitar player that all guitarists want to grow up and be. He wrings the sweet out of those strings. And he doesn’t clutter it up. Sometimes it’s more about what a player DOESN’T do. And nobody does that better than Jeff Beck.