JIMI HENDRIX — Electric Ladyland (review)

JIMI HENDRIX — Electric Ladyland album cover Album · 1968 · Proto-Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4.5/5 ·
Warthur
The Jimi Hendrix Experience's final album captures the band just at the moment it disintegrated - when Jimi's soaring ambitions finally reached the point where Noel and Mitch simply couldn't keep up any more. Nowhere is this more obvious than on Noel's sole composition on the album, "Little Miss Strange" - an unambitious slice of 60s pop which shows absolutely no songwriting progress or development over "She's So Fine" on Axis: Bold as Love. But even as the structure of the trio disintegrates before your very ears, wonderful things come out of the cracks. The epic "Voodoo Chile", a sprawling improvisation encompassing a whole range of blues styles, doesn't even feature Redding on it - Mitch is still on drums, but Jefferson Airplane's Jack Casady is on bass, and Steve Winwood guests on organ.

The album also sees Hendrix moving away from the songwriting approach that dominated his first two albums and going for increasingly long songs, no longer content to confine his ideas to brief two-to-three minute bursts. It's not that he's forgotten how to produce fast-paced and punchy short tracks - this album includes Crosstown Traffic, one of Hendrix's best songs in that style - it's just that he's less interested in it. This does mean that some of the shorter songs on the album aren't quite up to the standards of the epics - Long Hot Summer Night seems kind of shallow, and the cover of Come On (Let the Good Times Roll) is a bit of fun but doesn't strive to be much more than a bit of fun. Whilst Mitch seems game for this new direction, Noel isn't featured on either of the album's big epics (Voodoo Chile and 1983...A Merman I Should Turn To Be), both of which result from jam sessions which Noel wasn't sitting in on. But that isn't to say that the epics on the album aren't the only attraction, or that Noel isn't a presence at all - songs like Voodoo Child (Slight Return) (a heavy, proto-metallic summarisation of Voodoo Chile), and the awe-inspiring and definitive cover of Dylan's All Along the Watchtower show the trio in full flight. But it was more than clear at this point that Jimi not only didn't need the trio structure any more, he positively needed to branch out and experiment with other artists and band configurations in order to give full expression to his many ideas. The album isn't perfect - again, Little Miss Strange just doesn't seem to belong - but as far as a swansong for the Experience goes, it's a truly fine one.
Share this review
more

Review Comments

Post a public comment below | Send private message to the reviewer
Please login to post a shout
No shouts posted yet. Be the first member to do so above!

Review Index

Member Zone

Username:
Password:
Stay signed in

Metal Subgenres

Artists Alpha-index

MMA TOP 5 Metal ALBUMS

Rating by members, ranked by custom algorithm
Albums with 30 ratings and more
Master of Puppets Thrash Metal
METALLICA
Buy this album from our partners
Paranoid Heavy Metal
BLACK SABBATH
Buy this album from our partners
Moving Pictures Hard Rock
RUSH
Buy this album from our partners
Powerslave NWoBHM
IRON MAIDEN
Buy this album from our partners
Rising Heavy Metal
RAINBOW
Buy this album from our partners

New Metal Artists

New Metal Releases

The First Breath Is The Beginning Of Death Sludge Metal
IDIOT CHILD
Buy this album from MMA partners
Morbid Curiosities Sludge Metal
LUURCH
Buy this album from MMA partners
Asbestos Tiles Hardcore Punk
SUNDOWNER
Buy this album from MMA partners
Lysergic Ritual Sludge Metal
SUNDOWNER
Buy this album from MMA partners
Terra Preta Sludge Metal
TITANOBOA
Buy this album from MMA partners
More new releases

New Metal Online Videos

Agremorta - Adrocitas (Official Lyric Video)
AGREMORTA
Bosh66· 1 day ago
Agremorta - Ploratus Umbra (Official Lyric Video)
AGREMORTA
Bosh66· 1 day ago
Agremorta - Vertex Membrana (Official Lyric Video)
AGREMORTA
Bosh66· 1 day ago
HAIL SPIRIT NOIR - The Temple Of Curved Space (Official Track Stream)
HAIL SPIRIT NOIR
adg211288· 1 day ago
In Sulfur - The Gate (OFFICIAL VIDEO) 2022
IN SULFUR
Bosh66· 2 days ago
More videos

New MMA Metal Forum Topics

More in the forums

New Site interactions

More...

Latest Metal News

members-submitted

More in the forums

Social Media

Follow us
Follow us on Twitter Become a Facebook fan RSS Feed