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For this album, it’s necessary to begin listening with a tabula rasa.  This is a new Jeremy Spencer, with a new sound and a new set of mostly old songs.  This is a more relaxed, a more peaceful Jeremy Spencer.  I saw another review that gave this album a 5 out of 10;  I think the reviewer was looking for the Jeremy Spencer he used to know.  But we all change, don’t we?  At some point in our lives, most of us have demons to grapple with.  I think Spencer has met his demons and brushed them aside.  And this album admirably demonstrates why he’s in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Impeccably picked notes are still the trademark of Spencer’s guitar-picking, and it begins with the first cut, “Homesick,” a loping blues.  Spencer’s slidework on “Whispering Fields,” an instrumental, sounds like silk sliding on satin.  No string screech, no missteps, just pure, clean  slidework, a maestro at his best.  Spencer’s long absence from the public eye is our loss.  Let’s hope he’s back to stay.  There’s a certain serenity that pervades this album that goes beyond the eye of the beholder, and the twelfth cut, another instrumental, “Merciful Sea,” exemplifies it.

– Lou Novacheck