Valleys of Neptune – The NEW Jimi Hendrix Album and The Time Traveller’s Wife

In the era of Avatar, Ipad and Obama a slightly less publicized phenomenon is taking place right before our ears. If the during  the last few decades we witnessed mind blowing amounts of repackaging, out-takes, rarities, live concert footage and legal bootlegs by the ton (you need a whole room just  to house all the Dylan and  Neil Young efforts), now we get to join the  time traveller’s wife as new albums appear from 40 year old music. Perhaps the biggest breakthrough was the release of Love by the Beatles (really more of a Spector than Lennon release). Then the ageing Leonard Cohen gave perhaps the best concert tour and album of his entire career. Now Jimi Hendrix releases a new studio album. The fact that he’s been dead for forty years s neither here nor there. This album contains pieces that were seemingly deemed not good enough at the time to enter an album. Listening to them today you realize how far we’ve gone since then, progressing backward in time.

No music recorded today is even on the same wavelength as the stuff you find on this album. Not only is there no guitarist out there who could even contend that he is Hendrix’s successor, there is nobody out there who is on the same planet that Hendrix came from. Take Hendrix’s version of the Cream classic Sunshine of Your Life, a Hendrix concert favourite. How good can a cover of a Clapton / Bruce masterpiece be? Ah but we’re talking Hendrix here. His mastery makes you want to forget the original version all together.

This new album cries miracle. We get another dose of Hendrix, no re-released bootlegs or remastered oldies. None of these tracks have been released before. True you’ve heard some of the tracks  before, notably the classic signature songs “Red House,” “Fire,” and “Stone Free”, but the renderings are all new and often awe-inspiring. Hendrix’s studio recordings are usually as gritty and magical as the concert pieces and Valleys of Neptune only goes to emphasis this point. Because of the incredible amount of repackaged Hendrix music released since his death, you might  be inclined to overlook Neptune. Don’t. This is the real thing. It’s the closest you’ll get to taking that time machine you think you have missed.