Consumer Guide Album

Steve Winwood: Chronicles [Island, 1987]
What can you expect of a man who could have sung like Ray Charles and chose instead to follow in the voiceprints of Jack Bruce? Classy arena-rock, that's what, redolent at its best of his fellow studio obsessives in Steely Dan, only never as smart, and at its worst more like REO Speedwagon. His radio-ready arrangements, hired lyrics, and funk borrowings are all hallmarks of the most venal popular music of the age, and that his synthesizer moves were slightly ahead of their time doesn't make them an iota less annoying. In short, a worthy biz legend. C+