I hate it when a press release makes me think! Usually they are there to tell me that the band are “stoked”, that it’s the best album of their career – I swear I want to be there for the one that says “yeah its quite good like, but its not a patch on our older stuff” – but not this one.
No, the document that Mascot Label Group sent to go along with “Ride” (which by the way is the 30th solo record of Walter Trout’s career) had this as an opening line: “However fast or far a man travels, he can never truly outrun his past.”
Dammit. Now I’ve got to spend another night thinking about what I said to someone in 1999 and how I should go back and change it, or perhaps, for extra fun I could scroll through my phone at 2am looking at all the names of all the girls who don’t talk to me anymore, and maybe message them for the 346th time because this time it’ll work.
And that’s not even a digression in this case, because if “Ride” is anything, it’s the product of worry, of anxiety and self-doubt.
In a way, that’s what makes it so wonderful, because if Walter Trout can feel like this, when he’s Walter Trout for goodness sake, then we can all feel like that. Consider this your permission.
It begins with the crunching riff and harmonica of “Ghosts”. There’s a bit of a ZZ Top feel to it, “Ghosts appear to me” sings Trout in his inimitable, weather-worn style. He can’t get any rest, can’t get away from them, and the urgency in the music reflects it perfectly.
The title track is another that looks to escape. You can imagine the Allman Brothers hopping the railroad with it. “I was just a kid” he offers. He’s 70 now and the desire for change still burns. He’s just left California for Denmark (he has a Danish wife) as if to exemplify that.
As ever, with Trout, the playing matches the words perfectly. “Follow You Back Home” is gentler, but somehow even more confused, “my heart walks in and lingers there” is beautifully poetic, but that is followed up by “So Many Sad Goodbyes”, where you can almost hear Trout seethe with rage. “There ain’t no way to comprehend the things that’s been going on today…..” he spits. And his incredulity shines again on “High Is Low”. A conventional 12 bar harp drenched thing, but Trout is as good as anything there is. Perhaps the best guitarist this side of Rory Gallagher. Big call? Nope. Not really. He’s a genius.
The ballads here are gorgeously bleak. “Waiting for The Dawn” with a very Gary Moore sounding lead is proof. I’d also contend that this doesn’t sound much like any other Walter Trout record. It sounds more raw somehow, “Better Days Ahead” seems to implore by sheer will alone, but it’s balanced out by the more Country tinged “This Fertile Soil”. Naturally, for this record, things are worse than he remembered, and you wouldn’t want it any other way.
There’s an outright slice of hi-octane fun. Walter gets horny, if you will (in the Southside Johnny sense…) on the brilliant “Leave It All Behind”. “Responsibility, politely declined” he sings and does so in such a way that suggests he wouldn’t be so polite if you bothered him again.
There’s a deeply personal couple to end things too. “Hey Mama” is a match for anything Neil Young ever did, as he pleads to his mother and thanks her for all she did. While “Destiny” is very much a love song to his wife. A beautiful breeze wafts in almost and this one is the one that anchors everything. That makes the “Ride” worth it, to Walter.
There’s one other though and it resonated with me, and it will with anyone of a certain mindset. “I Worry Too Much” is superb classic blues, wracked with worry about life, health, the world. Everything. Then from nowhere comes the line: “I worry about my music, is it really any good?” And you think, good grief, does he not understand?!
So let me spell it out for you Walter, if I may. There is no one that can match your work since “Battle Scars” in 2015, the “comeback” seminal album after recovering from a kidney transplant and learning to play again. “Ride” is the fifth studio record – including that one – since then and its yet another that might just be the album of the year. So yes, it really, really is “any good.”
Rating 10/10
