Description
It would seem all but impossible for an artist to produce an album that sounds original and inspired on their 29th attempt, but that is exactly what Walter Trout achieves on Ordinary Madness. Recorded at Robbie Krieger’s studio, the eleven tracks share common themes of time, mortality, and love, all while managing to sound vastly different from one another. Honest love songs follow crushingly hard rockers, which in turn lead into western-tinged blues tales. There are nearly as many types of songs as tracks on the set.
The album is consistently great cover to cover. As expected, the band is stellar, and a couple of contributions by additional musicians fill in any imagined holes in the mix. For an album that broaches some deeply personal subjects, Ordinary Madness succeeds in being universally relatable, not to mention extremely enjoyable. It is one of Trout’s best entries in his extensive catalog.
