Much More Than Words

Album Review

Spencer Durham was all of 18 when he recorded this album (his second) and already a hell of a blues-rock guitar player (actually, he's a multi-instrumentalist, but it's the guitar work that stands out). His ideas are sophisticated and his technique admirably advanced. Durham's electric leads are sharp, smart, and stinging, his rhythms are chunky and nasty, and his acoustic work is particularly impressive, swampy, and sweet at the same time. But Durham still has a long way to go before he matures into an adult musician with the potential to contribute something of his own to the aging genre. His vocals are thin and emulative of too many other blues-and-boogie Southern rockers who've come before and, the weakest link of all, his songwriting is strictly, sometimes embarrassingly, amateurish. Too often Durham seems to be writing words that he thinks a real bluesman would write, instead of just being who he is: to hear this young voice go on about rambling and evil-hearted women busts him as a wannabe, and when he mourns the loss of a love by surmising that "There will be no forgetting memories from all those happy years," you almost have to laugh: which happy years, eighth grade or tenth? Perhaps that's why he called the album Much More Than Words? Nonetheless, the potential is definitely here, and once Durham gets more comfortable in his own musical skin, he could find himself a player in the preservation of a brand of music few of his age group care to investigate anymore.