Nine Lives - Dark Publications

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Album Description
Nine Lives expands on all the many phases and turns of Steve Winwood's lustrous career, bristling with his pure joy of music-making. The new songs range from the inspiring "Fly" to the burning "Dirty City" (featuring a guest appearance by long-time friend Eric Clapton) to the simmering "Hungry Man", joining a canon that spans more than forty years to include some of the most beloved songs of modern pop and rock.

Customer Reviews: Read 60 more reviews...

2 out of 5 stars

Steve Winwood Taking It Softly! May 1, 2008
76 out of 104 found this review helpful

There are two types of Steve Winwood music, and individual taste will dictate whether you will like this cd or not. If you are the Winwood fan who perfers his R&B pop sound,["Valarie", "Higher Love", "Roll With It", "Gimmie Some Lovin" etc], you are going to more than likely find this cd a total bore. If you perfer his soothing layed back jazzy traffic feel to his music, you are probably going to find this cd enjoyable. Having said that, after listening to this cd a few times, I find the cd to be somewhat uneventful. Well played and sung, but nothing that is going to be memorable, or even ear catching for that matter. Most of the music comes across as bland. I found the best song on the cd to be "At Times We Forget", which at least grabs the listeners ear, and is the most listenable track on this collection. "Dirty City", is another fine song, and features Eric Clapton, and predictably sounds as if it came right out of the Blind Faith era. The rest of the songs basically sound the same, with that jazzy slow uninspired sound. Steve Winwood is a great talent, but sometimes I feel he goes overboard with this smooth jazz sound that I also feel takes the fire out of many of his live shows. I do not want to sound negative, but this cd is nothing near his best work and is average at best.

4 out of 5 stars

The new rise of a true great British blue-eyed R&B artist ! May 7, 2008
43 out of 45 found this review helpful

Steve Winwood (who turns 60 this year) has signed a new deal with Columbia Records who has released the artist's highly-anticipated new major label album "Nine Lives", his first studio LP since the acclaimed "About Time" on his own independent label, Wincraft in 2003.
It and opens an important new chapter in Steve's extraordinary career.
Even after a career of 45 years, there always a suspicion that Steve Winwood may surprise us.
He lives the quiet life of a country squire in his Cotswolds retreat, but periodically Steve Winwood emerges, like a gun-dog with a grouse in its mouth, bearing another album of gorgeous, wide-ranging songs.
"Nine Lives" is the latest: it has less of a Latin flavour than its predecessor About Time, but at times it has more of an edge, especially on the rousing, gritty-sounding "Dirty City", on which his old Blind Faith bandmate Eric Clapton guests on guitar.
The album is written and co-produced by Steve Winwood with Johnson Somerset- whose previous credits include Roxy Music and Duran Duran.
Why Nine Lives ? Some people believe in the superstition that cats have nine lives, because cats can survive falls from high places with few, if any injuries. This gives the appearance that the cats return to life after sustaining a fatal accidents, they may sustain minor injuries, such but they live to recover.
The aptly titled album is a fresh and invigorating rediscovery of Winwood's roots, his personal style and career, and paints a musical portrait of spiritual transformation as Winwood continues the exploration of soul, rock, blues and world music which began in 1957, when, at the age of 9, he played guitar in his father's band in Birmingham, England.
Pretty much everything you'd ever want from a Steve Winwood album is here: the plaintive voice, the pulsing rhythms, the multifarious musical influences (funk, jazz, blues, world) - and of course Winwood's trusty old Hammond B3 organ, which drenches this album in its blazing, shimmering warmth.
He is now just days from his 60th birthday, but he joined the Spencer Davis Group at just 15, voyaging through blue-eyed R&B, toying with psychedelia in Traffic, doing the supergroup thing with Eric Clapton in Blind Faith and pioneering the DIY play-everything approach with "Arc of A Diver".
Since then, Winwood has perfected a synthesis of blues, jazz, soul, latin and occasionally folk which at its best is exquisite. No mean guitarist, a master of the lush Hammond organ and possibly one of the best voices in English rock, Winwood's name should be writ as large as Clapton's.
It has nine arresting songs: on each of them he continues the exploration of soul, rock, blues and world music that Steve Winwood is renowned for.
It kicks off with a I'm Not Drowning, hitched to a delta blues riff.
Amongst the many highlights on the album, "Fly" is a brave and ambitious track featuring soaring powerful vocals set against a cacophony of sound: it is a gossamer-fine love song, using latin rhythm, nylon-strung guitar, pining soprano sax and organ, Winwood's voice creating the kind of hymn-like quality he brought to Traffic's "Holy Ground".
Other highlights on the album are many and include "Forget About Him", a joyous and moving six-minute journey through horns, keyboards and world instruments.
Alongside "Hungry Man", which sounds like something from Paul Simon's Brazilian-style "Rhythm Of The Saints", "We're All Looking", a mighty fine Latin funk with lashings of Hammond and the captivating track "Secrets" show that the album is as consistently strong as it is diverse.
On this CD Steve Winwood turns another musical corner, showcasing his ability to still create relevant and evocative music. It gives his fans, old and new, nine new reasons to celebrate the life and music of this ageless, and still prodigious, musical treasure.
Steve and Eric Clapton played three sold out nights at Madison Square Gardens, New York in February.
Steve and his band will be special guests to Tom Petty on his US tour this summer.

4 out of 5 stars

If you liked him in "Blind Faith" and his jazzy phases, this CD is for you May 4, 2008
38 out of 53 found this review helpful

I've liked Steve Winwood through most of his career, including Blind Faith, Traffic, and his solo music. I'm not as much a fan of the pop tunes as I am the jazzier, bluesier music.

The single of "Dirty City" a gritty Blind Faith style number with his old friend Eric Clapton led this CD out into radioland. It's my favorite cut of the collection and the reason I bought the CD.

"Fly" is lovely. The flute at the end of the song is compelling and really conjures up the image of flight.

I'd like to see "At Times we Forget" get some airplay. It's got strong lyrics and is a good listen.

Check out the samples on this page and see what you think. While this CD is mostly jazz and blues influenced, fans of Winwood's pop may find a few cuts they really enjoy--and the price for this collection is excellent.

4 out of 5 stars

Some semi-Finer Things April 29, 2008
22 out of 38 found this review helpful

The new Winwood CD opens in fitting fashion, with "I'm Not Drowning," a catchy acoustic blues number co-written and entirely performed by Steve (the one-man band act he's been known to do over the years). The song is one of three standouts for me on the new long-player, the others being the soulful "Raging Sea," featuring excellent guitar work by Jose Pires de Almeida Neto, and the much-heralded Winwood-Clapton single, "Dirty City." Some of the other songs at first seemed less substantial, such as a pleasant, smooth 7-minute tune called "Fly," but I've appreciated those songs more on the 2nd and 3rd listen. This is not Winwood's all-time best recorded work, but it's a respectable enough collection of new songs from a former kid prodigy who's still putting out good material in his fifth decade as a professional musician.

5 out of 5 stars

A tremendous surprise May 10, 2008
13 out of 16 found this review helpful

While I've always had an appreciation for all aspects of Steve Winwood's music (solo and non), I've never really gone nuts for any of it. Until now...

Nine Lives is simply a fantastic album. The instrumentation is sparse, made up of mostly Winwood on Hammond and guitar, a drummer, and a percussionist. Occasionally, he's joined by a sax or flute player, and on one track Eric Clapton jumps in for a smokin' guitar solo. The vocals consist of Steve, solo, without a doubled lead vocal track or any background vocals. It's a fairly minimalist arrangement, but the sparseness just makes it that much more effective.

The groove is mostly laid back, and the songs are extended into mostly five to seven minute explorations of a musical idea. The album isn't flashy, and Winwood doesn't seem to be trying to impress anyone with his skills. He's just out to have a good time, and make some music that he enjoys. It translates to a remarkable album.

Nine Lives is an unexpected joy. I can't seem to listen to it enough, and I know I can't recommend it highly enough. It takes a lot for an album to really blow me away. Nine Lives blows me away...

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