[Slowhand] Review of "Clapton" - the album

[Marlene Opila]

First newspaper review I've seen of EC's upcoming CD, from the Detroit Free Press.  Review is brief but positive.

http://www.freep.com/article/20100815/ENT04/8150323/1035/Ent/Kem-brings-soulful-romance-to-Intimacy-

After five decades and dozens of albums, we're getting, at last, simply "Clapton" (***, Reprise). Due Sept. 27, this latest record from Eric Clapton tacks another chapter onto his lifelong fascination with Americana. And like his 2006 collaboration with JJ Cale, it skips the adult-contemporary blahs that have plagued so much of his latter-day work.

The music is as refreshingly unadorned as the title, a dizzyingly diverse batch of covers and originals played straight and assured by Clapton and his band. It's precisely the sort of effort you might expect at this point from the 65-year-old stalwart, mingling spare bluesy fare -- like the dark opening cut "Travelin' Alone" -- and pop standards ("How Deep is the Ocean," "Autumn Leaves") with a cultivated sensibility.

Many of these songs have become familiar to fans of the guitarist's live show, and there's a pleasant exuberance in Clapton's summoning of left-field bluesmen such as Snooky Pryor ("Judgement Day") and Robert Wilkins ("That's No Way to Get Along"). If this is the Eric Clapton we're going to get from here out, we'll be waiting with ears wide open.