★★★★★
Anyone expecting Ian Moore to whip out his guitar for a display of masterful six-string pyrotechnics on To Be Loved will be disappointed. His move to Seattle 10 years ago was liberation from the Texas guitar-slinger label mantled on his shoulders as a local youngster, a formidable honor but a rough standard. With To Be Loved, Moore has turned his attention to melody and lyrics with gratifying results...
- www.austinchronicle.com
2009-07-21
★★★★★
This one may be cause to revise my best of 2004 list. Ian Moore is a hotshot Texas blues-rock guitarist (now based in Seattle) and former Joe Ely sideman now transitioning to a second career as a soulful singer/songwriter. Luminaria has a bit of the blues, but a lot of country, pop, gospel and other sounds as well. It's not guitar fireworks that impress here, but Moore's versatile voice, the intimate yet majestic songscapes and his intriguing southern gothic lyrics...
- www.ink19.com
2009-07-20
★★★★★
Back in the mid- to late '90s the music landscaped was littered with hotshot blues-rock guitarists who, despite badass guit-chops and their otherwise best efforts, were more or less interchangeable: Chris Duarte, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, a few other guys I'm forgetting, and Ian Moore. Moore's guitar heroics fueled a few hit-or-miss albums (1993's self-titled debut and 1995's Modernday Folklore, both for Capricorn) that no one would mistake for the second coming of Stevie Ray Vaughan...
- www.popmatters.com
2009-03-21
★★★★★
This disc by the former Joe Ely guitar player Ian Moore bears little resemblance (other than the high octane quality) to the music he made with Ely, and owes much more to the Beatles and the psychedelic movement. You are still able to discern his underlying feel of the blues. This is a long leap, but it is a very positive broad step out. Moore either wrote or co-wrote ten of the 11 songs on the disc, and there are no weak ones; nor do they fall into any repetitiveness or follow any formula...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
★★★★★
With To Be Loved, Ian Moore has fashioned his most challenging and experimental album yet, moving toward moody soundscapes, haunting beauty, and nervy energy. The title track makes mesmerizing and surprising shifts, from mellow to abrasive and back again, coming off like a John Lennon composition reimagined in a post-Wilco world...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
★★★★★
The Austin-based rocker's fifth album is notable not only for Moore's ability to balance searing blues guitar and melodic hard-rock sensibility, but also for its downright soulfulness. "Room 229" is a smoldering, almost Portishead-like track that finds Moore displaying genuine soul vocal chops. "Magdalena" is the kind of hard rock/soul marriage that Lenny Kravitz occasionally succeeds at, with Moore scraping the top of his vocal range with a sweet falsetto...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
★★★★★
Steeped in blues, R&B;, and soul, Texan guitarist Moore smolders and sears in equal measure.
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28