THE THUNDERTHIEF

Oh the irony, as I write this heavy thunderstorms are actually rolling in.

Jones' third solo album is a rather eclectic affair. After the all instrumental Zooma he decided to add some vocals into the mix, his own. As you might expect the style is nothing like Robert Plant's, but not bad to my ears. Jones also plays diverse collection of instruments, including oddly enough 4, 6, 10, and 12 string basses. Maniac. Yeah, he's pretty much a string freak though he does do keyboards, too. John is also supplemented by a percussionist and three guests including Robert Fripp doing a guitar solo on Leafy Meadows. This album is on Fripp's label, by the way.

The afore mentioned Leafy Meadows is nice heavy prog instrumental. John's kind of fond of slide guitar. The Thunderthief is the first vocal, a weird, dark little tune. Hoediddle has a little hoedown/celtic jig flavoring to it. Ice Fishing At Night, the second vocal (both were written by Peter Blegvad) is a nice mellow piece. John takes a break from the strings to do solo piano with vocals, very mellow. Back to the bayou flavor with instrumental Daphne. Angry Angry is another quirky little vocal. Kinda punky. Don't let it get to you. Down To The River To Pray is a bit folksy/gospel flavored and thankfully instrumental, as I don't think I'd like to hear him try to sing a gospel style tune. Shibuya Bop kicks things back into heavy overdrive. Freedom Song wraps it all up with folksy with John on guitar and singing once again in probably his best style for the whole album.

As a bonus, I ordered this one used and it came autographed. I don't know what that says about it, but this might be a hard one to enjoy for the average Led Zeppelin fan. They'll probably take better to Zooma.

Epilogue: after a few hours the storms have passed. Maybe this damn thing actually works. Unfortunately, now I've got to try and get some sleep.

"The Thunderthief, he puts us under. While we sleep he steals our thunder."