Customer Reviews

Inheritance

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Was eager to check out Legg's new record and was in no way disappointed! He, again, has delivered with his well-known incredible guitar pickin combined with beautifully crafted songs...
A delight to listen to over and over...this will be a mainstay in my CD player for a long time to come!

Adrian Legg sounds exactly like Adrian Legg, and no one else. And no one else sounds anything like Adrian Legg. He is one of the most gifted acoustic guitarists around, with an instantly recognizable sound, excellent compositional skills, and a delightful sense of humor. This release stands as one of Adrian's best CDs. It's a skillful, lovely, idiosyncratic, resounding testament to one of the best solo acoustic guitarists on the scene today.

Melding snappy chicken pickin', Travis-style alternating bass, swing-band voicings, real-time retuning, bagpipe-like drones, and pedal steel-inspired bends, Adrian Legg pushes the boundaries of solo guitar like no one else. His broad sonic palette includes acoustic colors from a miked parlor guitar ("My Blackbird Sings All Night"), ringing mag-pickup timbres ("Nail Talk"), and sizzling undersaddle pickup sounds bathed in ambient washes of digital processing ("English Blue"). Pledging no allegiance to any particular genre or musical period, he bounces from delicate, hymn-like melodies to funky Jerry Reed riffs to pensive modal improvisations. A skilled arranger, Legg occasionally augments his guitar with string and brass ensemble accompaniment; these organic sounds provide a welcome foil to his electronic explorations. While many of the originals on this instrumental record have a somber cast, Legg's subversive take on tone and technique give Inheritance a playful feel.

This is Adrian Legg's second album for Steve Vai's Favored Nations label, a label which includes fellow guitarists Pierre Bensusan, Eric Johnson and Tommy Emmanuel, among others. The eleven originals on this album cover a variety of styles. The opening track is the funky "Nefertiti-What a Sweetie." "My Blackbird Sings All Night" is a reflective acoustic piece. "A Waltz for Leah" is another acoustic piece reminiscent of Peter Lang. On "More Fun in the Swamp," Legg shows off his rapid-fire picking on an electric guitar. "English Blue" wouldn't have sounded out of place on a Chet Atkins album.

On several tracks, Legg encorporates the use of effects to coax an organ-like sound from his guitar. This is used to wonderful effect on "Doublejigs" and "Emneth," where it provides a majestic quality to the playing. On "Decree" (the shortest track at only 1:45) there is nothing recognizable as a guitar.

Overall, Legg is simply one of the finest fingerstyle guitarists around. He was won numerous accolades, including Guitar Player magazine readers' poll for Best Fingerstyle Guitarist four years in a row. Although I didn't discover Legg until ten years ago when I purchased GUITARS AND OTHER CATHEDRALS, his recording career spans more than thirty years. (Unfortunately his albums for Relativity Records are no longer in print.) If you've never heard of Adrian Legg, this is an excellent introduction to this gifted guitarist. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED [Running Time - 44:33]

Adrian Legg is an incredibly gifted player there is no doubt about that, but I think he relies to heavily on effects to do the playing. Like for instance the song "Psalm With No Words," that song would have been great without his guitar all phased/chorused out. It sounds terrible! He also needs to work on playing less, because he tries to put too many chords/notes in a phrases and it just doesn't sound that great. His songwriting is okay, but I think his playing shouldn't overshadow the song. The song should always come first.

Many of his albums are lacking in the creativity department simply because he tries too hard to somehow inject his songs with an over usage of technique. He should really let the song speak for itself and not subject his listeners to his effects and overbarring guitar technique(s).

I like Adrian Legg, but I'm not going to subject myself to him, unless his music starts to speak for itself.