Released By : Roadrunner Records
Genre : Blues Rock
Links : http://www.stevemillerband.com/
Tracklist:
01. Snatch It Back and Hold It
02. I Got Love If You Want It
03. Just a Little Bit
04. Close Together
05. No More Doggin’
06. Pretty Thing
07. Can’t Be Satisfied
08. Sweet Home Chicago
09. Love the Life I Live
10. The Walk
I was as surprised as anyone last year to discover that STEVE MILLER BAND had a new album coming out, but what surprised me even more was that BINGO! was actually an excellent album and a large improvement over his previous album 1993’s WIDE RIVER. A lot of people bagged BINGO! out because it was a pretty standard blues based album with a lot of cover versions on it, but for me personally I thought the material suited Miller’s approach perfectly and each of the cover versions were done very well.
I knew something was up when I heard that Miller and co had yet another album on the way this year, less that twelve months after BINGO!, especially when you keep in mind that the gap between that one and WIDE RIVER was a massive seventeen years! And lo and behold the information gets passed down the wire that these songs were all recorded in the same sessions that brought us BINGO! And was basically a disc full of unused tracks. Does the album suffer for it? Well…not so much really but it does sound a little too much like its predecessor to really get the blood flowing, but overall these ten tunes stand up as being just as good as anything on the previous album, it’s just a matter of whether or not Miller fans will need twenty songs in this similar vibe.
The band cruise through a chilled version of Junior Wells’ SNATCH IT BACK AND HOLD IT, followed by a similar sounding cover of GOT LOVE IF YOU WANT IT originally penned by SLIM HARPO. NO MORE DOGGIN’ comes across as a more standard SMB tune with Miller’s trademark spacey double-layered vocals as does CAN’T BE SATISFIED, but the best tune of the album though would likely be a great version of blues standard SWEET HOME CHICAGO which is actually one of the better versions I’ve heard.
LET YOUR HAIR DOWN is a decent enough latter day album from Miller and band, but it does suffer a little from basically being a bunch of songs deemed not good enough for the previous album. Fans of BINGO! Will find much to like here, but hopefully there is no more songs left over from these sessions as I think it’s time for the band to move onto something else now.
Written By ZeeZee
Rating : 7/10
