★★★★★
429 How do you sound new after 25 years? Blues Traveler's poetic center, John Popper, gave that quandary a great deal of thought for his band's 11th studio album. His answer: a lot of co-writers. Suzie Cracks the Whip finds Blues Traveler incorporating a cast of outside voices, resulting in a novel yet familiar album. Opener "You Don't Have to Love Me" (written by Aaron Beavers) comes with Popper's dirigible energy, nearly managing to make even rejection sound fun...
- www.relix.com
2012-06-28
★★★★★
Longtime Blues Traveler fans baffled by the band's detour into faux '70s prog rock on the Jay Bennett-produced Bastardos! (2005) should welcome their latest effort with open arms—and open ears. The set list reads like a greatest hits album, but Cover Yourself does exactly what the title implies: It makes the old faves fresh by reinventing them. Ben Wilson's chiming piano chords set the stage with "But Anyway...
- www.offbeat.com
2010-11-09
★★★★★
For a band like Blues Traveler that has been around for more than two decades, you would think that they would have nothing left to prove. They could just continue making the same bluesy-pop that they are notorious for and cater to their gigantic fan base, like Collective Soul or Live. But on their ninth studio album, North Hollywood Shootout, the band mixes some different sounds (different for Blues Traveler anyway) with their signature style to create their most diverse album ever...
- www.ink19.com
2009-07-20
★★★★★
They sure can play their axes--might even be tolerable as a boogie band. But "All in the Groove" is just a classic-rock line. John Popper's interest in fun is strictly rhetorical, and his rhetoric is so prolix I bet they only play three-hour sets so he can get all the words in. I also bet that as a Jack Bruce fan he thinks it's groovy when his rhythm section hustles out more notes than a good groove needs.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
It's been 20 years since Blues
Traveler rose to prominence on New York City's jam-band circuit,
and well over a decade since "Run-Around" shattered a record for
its lengthy stay on the singles charts. Nevertheless, the band
explores very familiar territory on North Hollywood Shootout,
which pairs John Popper's harmonica acrobatics with songs that
groove, waltz and occasionally rock...
- www.pastemagazine.com
2009-06-17
★★★★★
Take the blues, hack off its roots, ditch its more difficult
emotions, and you've got a dim but likable style born in the
'70s called boogie rock.
That's the zippy genre Blues Traveler have lovingly reheated for
the '90s. By echoing acts like J. Geils, Foghat, and ZZ Top, BT
have fashioned the breeziest jam music of now.
They do so with fresh liveliness on their first studio album
since their 1994 sextuple-platinum breakthrough LP, four...
- ew.com
2009-06-12
★★★★★
As comforting and sensationalas tea with lemon and honey, John Popper could have one of rock'sgreatest throats. His equally virtuosic harmonica, wit ("Go Outside &Drive"), and sensitivity ("Letter From a Friend") make you almostforget his blatant Van Morrison cop ("Conquer Me") and overly busybar-band buddies on Save His Soul.
- ew.com
2009-06-12
★★★★★
As an invitation to musical adventure, Blues Traveler have never offered better than "Great Big World," the eighth song on the sprawlingly ambitious 13-cut Straight On Till Morning...
- www.rollingstone.com
2009-06-08
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