True to Yourself
Blowing through 10 songs like a six-string hurricane, Albert Cummings arrives as perhaps the first serious contender to the blues-rock guitar throne vacated by the death ofStevie Ray Vaughan. His playing crackles with energy, spinning off stuttering bends and screaming sustained tones in every solo. And there are plenty of those, even in the two ballads: "Sleep," which displays his acoustic technique, and "Lonely Bed," a slow blues dappled with sensitive, probing melody lines. Like his hero Vaughan, Cummings often boosts his knottier phrases by stomping on a wah-wah pedal, kicking his Stratocaster into a throaty roar. He also shares Vaughan's last producer, blues-rock specialist Jim Gaines, and his bassist, Tommy Shannon. What Cummings lacks is Vaughan's range as a vocalist and songwriter. His singing is short on dynamics and his lyrics comprise fairly mundane love songs built on simple rhymes. Nonetheless, this disc makes a powerful calling card for a new, high-voltage talent.--Ted Drozdowski