Little Feat
Time Loves A Hero

...and after a stop at the Texas Rose Café in the middle of the desert, where it seems they serve drinks spiked with unorthodox substances, and a couple of hours in the company of a slice of pie taking a swing while a snail and a prince charming watch it, a "day at the dog races" might seem like a return to normality...

IT MIGHT.

Conditional is mandatory, because in the presence of the Feats, the word "normality" should always be used with caution - especially if you find yourself (and don't quite understand how) with the Catholic Church of Stilo perched above San Miguel de Allende on the cover. That is: Calabria and Mexico within a few kilometers. Where does reality end and where does the mushroom effect begin? This is also not very clear. But it's the norm with them. Maybe even my introduction above won't be very clear, but those accustomed to navigating these musical waters will certainly have caught on. Immediately.

As I was saying: "Day At The Dog Races" - this six-and-a-half minute sound monster that makes a BIG VOICE (so to speak, it’s only instrumental) among the grooves of the sixth effort of the quirky Californians. But even here, with those strange synthetic sounds at the opening - Bill Payne, HIM - one might get very confused. Keyboards that sound like flamenco guitars make you think you're in the stands of an arena waiting for the bull to come out - more than at a racetrack. Still in the desert, perhaps, which has been the natural habitat of Our Guys since the first album, when the sounds were different and you could even hear - rawly - the slide guitar of Mr. Ryland Cooder. But the possibilities for imagination end here: in a whirlwind of electric pianos, space guitars (too!) and granite bass riffs the races have already started, there's only time to take a seat and enjoy. Because at first things are so intricate that orientation is difficult, the dust kicked up is so much and that mixture of electricity and synths has already put you in a trance. No, you didn't expect this. You expected it in a jazz-rock record, maybe. But unlike many fusion drivelers, His Deviated Highness Paul Barrère dismantles all certainty and tells you that with technique you can tell stories. You can unfold entire novels, indeed EPICS - of instrumental prowess.

In '77, Little Feat was this. Less acid than in the beginning, less spontaneous too but more elaborate, to the point of becoming complex. Still unpredictable.

And in the meantime, you wonder (inevitable, if you listen to seventies Feats) what happened to the Genius in all of this. It’s there.

Lowell George is there. He is a bit more in the background than before, his vocal work is reduced, but he is like an omnipresent shadow. The band (Clayton, Barrère, Gradney, Hayward, and Payne) is going great, he can also limit himself to the guitar and a writing that doesn’t lose its luster - because then he is capable of giving you a "Rocket In My Pocket" that oozes funk and groove from every pore, and he can lend his vocal cords to a "New Delhi Freight Train" that deserves immediate applause; the signature is Terry Allen's, on the other hand, that peculiar inclassifiable border character who could not help but cross paths with George.

And then saxophones and trumpets and more saxophones and more trumpets, of course. Scattered here and there, just to remember that from New Orleans ("Dixie Chicken" teaches) one had passed and that Allen Toussaint had left his mark. Even Michael McDonald’s "blue-eyed soul" voice is part of the game, adding to "Red Streamliner" that SOMETHING EXTRA that even Steely Dan could not do without (from "Katy Lied" onwards). And then the well-known title track that would have looked great on "Waiting For Columbus," but that's not all.

Even Nashville wants its share: at the end of the race there's a need to be moved, and so Barrère unleashes these two minutes of “Missin’ You” for tender hearts that recall "Willin'," as a perfect conclusion to everything. Acoustic splendor of pure melancholy - with the "resonator guitar" not of just anyone, but of a Legend: Jeff Baxter.

And I'll stop here.