Rating: * (1 out of 4)

Availability:Widely Available

Blues Traveler's Travelers and Thieves is a rare type of album. It is the type of album that you can start playing, forget that it's on, and finish listening to it without ever feeling like you've heard anything. The only memorable moment is during "What's For Breakfast," when John Popper utters those immortal words, "Ya gotta wake up and smell the collective coffee, if you know what I'm saying."

In a nutshell, I did not care all that much for this album. The songs are either so chaotic as to fade into mere background noise or so structured that they feel hollow and empty. Some songs, like the ironically titled "I Have My Moments," strike a strange sort of blend, shifting from one over-structured line to John Popper stumbling over fifteen lines stuffed into the space made for four as the instruments rush to catch up. The album begins with random noise in the 1:30 track, "The Tiding," which leads into "Onslaught," a song so chaotic that you find yourself wishing they had only included 6:08 more of "The Tiding." "Optimistic Thought" is a completely structured and controlled song, bleached of meaning and color.

This album makes one star because of one song, the slow ballad "Sweet Pain," based in part on the story of Cyrano DeBergerac, the great hero of Edmond Rostand's play. The song works as a slow ballad, but cannot save the rest of this dreadfully off-balanced album. Blues Traveler has shown great skill on such projects as the Blues Brothers 2000 soundtrack, but this attempt falls short of being anything near spectacular.

The opinions expressed in the above reviews are those of Glen Williams and may not represent the views of slac.com or any of its members. Compliments, complaints, and comments should be addressed to gandalf@tricon.net

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