 Earl Klugh Actually, I would categorize this one more as "mid-afternoon guitar," but that may be simply because I spend most of my late nights listening to the harsh slap of my leather master's cat o' nine tails against my naked and bruised backside. However, once I come to the following day and emerge from his suburban dungeon into the blinding sunlight, I like to go home and relax with a Nescafé and an album like this. Mostly time-honored standards in intimate arrangements that feature Klugh's acoustic guitar over warm beds of strings and light percussion, Late Night Guitar is a pretty slight, very brief album that nonetheless satisfies when the mood calls for something super-smooth. Like Neosporin on a huge lash mark across your back, buttocks, and thighs, this album really takes the edge off and allows you to just sit back and contemplate, lulling you into sleepy complacency with the beauty of its tasteful presentation. There's a fine line between an album like this and straight-out smooth jazz, but the all-acoustic instrumentation prevents it from coming off like a Boney James album or something recent by George Benson. Klugh offers up things like "Laura," "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," "Mona Lisa," and Jobim's "Triste" while somehow never allowing them to stick with you – it's as new-agey as you can make standards out to be – wait, I heard that Kenny G's new album is all standards, so maybe that's as new-agey as standards can be. This one is listenable as Kenny G will never be. Klugh is a solid performer but by no means a dangerous one. Honestly, if this hadn't been reissued by Blue Note as part of a weird wave of late-70s/early 80s funky jazz remasters, I probably would not have looked at it twice. But, slight as it is, it's pleasant background music, though for heavy master/slave action I would go with something more along the lines of, say, Einsturzende Neubaten.
Review by Morry Toner |