Roger the Engineer in Bloomington, MN

Once
Jeff Beck
joined
the Yardbirds
, the group began to explore uncharted territory, expanding their
blues-rock
into wild sonic permutations of
psychedelia
, Indian music, and
avant-garde
white noise. Each subsequent single displayed a new direction, one that expanded on the ideas of the previous single, so it would seem that
Roger the Engineer
--
Beck
's first full album with the group and the band's first album of all-original material -- would have offered them the opportunity to fully explore their adventurous inclinations. Despite a handful of brilliant moments,
falls short of expectations, partially because the band is reluctant to leave their
blues
roots behind and partially because they simply can't write a consistent set of songs. At their best on
Roger
,
strike a kinetic balance of
form and explosive
(
"Lost Woman,"
"Over, Under Sideways, Down,"
"The Nazz Are Blue,"
"He's Always There,"
"Psycho Daisies"
), but they can also bog down in silly Eastern drones (although
"Happenings Ten Years Time Ago"
is a classic piece of menacing
) or
tradition (
"Jeff's Boogie"
is a pointless guitar workout that doesn't even showcase
at his most imaginative). The result is an unfocused record that careens between the great and the merely adequate, but
always had a problem with consistency -- none of their early albums had the impact of the singles, and
suffers from the same problem. Nevertheless, it is
' best individual studio album, offering some of their very best
, even if it doesn't rank among the great albums of its era. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine