Steve Winwood

Winwood's 2008 release finds him touching on pretty much every aspect of his career, from the heavy blues of "Dirty City," which features the guitarwork of Eric Clapton, to Traffic-style groove rock ("Raging Sea") to straight-up soul ("We're All Looking"), and even the adult alternative mellowness of his '80s period ("Fly"). The opener, "I'm Not Drowning," is a stripped-bare and highly effective delta blues that features Winwood's trademark talent with a melody at the chorus. Impressively, he runs through all kinds of styles here but never stops sounding like Steve Winwood.

The miracle of Steve Winwood's voice in the Sixties, on his churning R&B hits with the
Spencer Davis Group and in the bucolic psychedelia of the first Traffic records, was that a
white English teenager could sound so black and adult. The wonder of "I'm Not Drowning,"
the acoustic, rolling blues that opens his new album, is that Winwood, almost 60, sings the
fighting words with the ecstatic force of his youth. His voice is a deeper, huskie... More >