Amazingly, it's 21 years since Robert Cray delivered his debut album, Who's Been Talkin'. Later albums have sustained a consistent level of songwriting and performance without ever setting the world on fire. The new album, Shoulda Been Home, is a case in point. It comprises a dozen tracks of soulful bluesiness, sensitively sung and tastefully played, but you wish Cray could throw off his restraint occasionally, and go ape.
His visit to Shepherds Bush found him typically relaxed, switching frequently between guitars as his backing trio clocked in dependably in support. He is now in his late 40s, but Cray looks barely older than the young contender who emerged in the 1980s. His stage demeanour is unfailingly amiable as he banters jovially with the front rows. All well and good, but there's no way you could ever believe that Cray was one of those obsessive, driven characters who went down to the crossroads and sold his soul to the devil. Nor was there any evidence of a hellhound on his trail, though he did have an impressively efficient guitar roadie.
Cray's clean-cut normality tends to make the stories of betrayal and loneliness that teem through his songs feel abstract, as if he has made a careful study of his musical heritage rather than having his songs dragged out of him by raging creative torment. A slow blues such as Help Me Forget offers plenty of scope for his delicate touch and clean tone on guitar, and his singing conveys an air of well-mannered regret, but it's a bit like an exhibit in a blues museum.
The combo were more persuasive in the uptempo pieces. Enough for Me offered a hint of funkiness and featured a gear-change into a barrelling R&B interlude, while they whipped up some extra attack for I'm in a Phone Booth (presumably I'm on My Mobile would sound like an anachronism in Cray-world).
Apart from Cray's extended guitar interludes, keyboardist Jim Pugh was given plenty of room (Cray even put down his guitar at one point and urged the diffident Pugh to keep playing), with his Memphis-flavoured organ work particularly persuasive. But what the Cray band lacks is memorable songs, with pieces such as I'm Going Home or Our Last Night more like stylistic exercises than expressions of emotion. The support act was new- traditionalist bluesman Christ Thomas King. Cray should watch out, because he could be the new new kid on the block.
Related links:
Robert Cray
Shepherds Bush Empire
