Jimi Hendrix - Valleys of Neptune

Nearly 40 years after his death, Jimi Hendrix is still turning heads. The latest bout of head-turning came earlier this month, when countless publications and radio stations devoted hours of air-time and pages of headlines to the most recent collection of archived recordings released by Experience Hendrix LLC, Valleys of Neptune.

Posthumous albums can be hit or miss, uneven affairs, mostly filler discarded in favor of other tunes more worthy of release. Valleys of Neptune is no exception.

It’s hard to deny that Hendrix was a revolutionary. He turned rock music on its head in 1967 and forever changed the way musicians looked at the electric guitar. The sounds he squeezed out of the instrument seemed otherworldly, and his writhing stage persona made showmanship almost as important as technical skill.

This is why Valleys of Neptune is, on the whole, disappointing. There’s nothing mind-blowing on this set, and nothing new to stand-up to the blistering work of his three studio albums or the Band of Gypsys disc.

There’s no “Purple Haze,” “Little Wing” or “Voodoo Child” on Neptune. The songs are good – some are great – but there’s nothing exceptional. The fire that made the Jimi Hendrix experience blister on their first three albums seems to be missing.

That the fire is missing is understandable. The majority of the tracks were recorded in the early months of 1969, when the relationship between Hendrix and bassist Noel Redding began to deteriorate. It shows. Hendrix and Co. sound tired on a lot of these tracks, weary and subdued, ready to go their separate ways.

Despite the evident weariness, Valleys of Neptune does contain a few gems that remind you why Hendrix is revered as a rock god. The trio gives a blistering take on Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love.” At 6:45 the song lasts about three minutes too long, but the group sounds inspired here, each member pushing each other to do justice to Cream’s classic.

Other standouts include the funky “Ships Passing In The Night” and “Bleeding Heart,” and a hair-raising extended take on “Red House,” that finds the bands flexing its blues muscle.

On the whole, however, Valleys of Neptune will only show you what everybody knows about Hendrix, that the man who forever changed rock and roll in 1967 was years ahead of his time, and that the majority of the rock world is still struggling to catch up.