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A smooth and engaging affair, with consistently strong singing and playing from Clapton.
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With guitars down in the mix (when they aren't unplugged altogether), Clapton's ever-evolving voice is the real centerpiece.
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Over the course of fourteen tracks, Clapton blends virtually every style he's worked in during the past thirty-five years. Whether it will strike your ears as something-for-everyone generosity or a patchy jumble probably depends on how much of a purist you are.
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It's that sense of doing just enough but no more that permeates this album, at times rendering it laid back to the point of disengaged.
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There's nothing intrinsically wrong with this album - just the airbrushed production of tracks like James Taylor's 'Don't Let Me Be Lonely' robs them of any true grit and soul they might have had. And that, in a nutshell, is the problem afflicting Clapton at the moment, making for yet another average album to add to the list.
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But at heart, Reptile is yet another version of the tepid corporate rock records Clapton's been making ever since 1974's bestselling 461 Ocean Boulevard.
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Reptile shows the guitar legend continuing to explore classic blues-derived sounds with palpable sincerity and conviction.
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As a slice of rootsy blues, it works nicely.
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At its very best, "Superman Inside" for example, Reptile is as expressive as anything he did in the nineties. The other half of Reptile is a series of oddball genre digressions and cornball balladeering.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 13 out of 14
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Mixed: 0 out of 14
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Negative: 1 out of 14
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petersOct 14, 2006A bit slick, but that's Clapton since 30 years. Makes me want to play guitar myself again, which should be a plus!
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theresaoMay 6, 2005best of the recent albums.
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terribApr 30, 2005Very well done, as all others.