By
Eric Johnson’s standards, the five-year gap between 2005’s
Bloom and 2010’s
Up Close is swift. It’s the shortest time between albums since
Ah Via Musicom followed
Tones by a mere four years and although
Up Close could hardly be called spontaneous, it does have a looseness that’s often absent in
Johnson’s work, perhaps because it trades so heavily on the guitarist’s Texas roots, a point he underscores by having songs called “Texas” and “Austin.” Naturally, this means there’s a bunch of blues on
Up Close, which finds room for cameos by Steve Miller,
Jimmie Vaughan,
Jonny Lang, and
Sonny Landreth, but even these moments don’t bear much grit because dirt is not part of
Johnson’s repertoire. He prefers clean and sculpted, an aesthetic that runs from his tone to his rhythms. He remains indebted to the fusion etched out by
Jeff Beck on
Blow by Blow but he no longer is taking it to the extremes, as when he divided
Bloom into movements.
Up Close is merely
Eric Johnson served straight-up: it is not far removed from the feel of
Ah Via Musicom, lacking only the major melodies that sucked in crossover listeners, but
Johnson’s journey is not one of innovation, it’s of refinement and he continues to find interesting ways to hone his specific craft on
Up Close. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine