Eric Clapton: Reptile - 2001

Another long album saw Clapton getting nostalgic - a picture of him as a child on the cover and several more old family snapshots inside - especially with the jazzy instrumental title track, Reptile, that opens proceedings. 

There is chugging, sixties-ish blues on a track like the old late 1950s blues cover of Got You On My Mind too. This is what one had come to expect from Clapton in the nineties and into the new millennium - solid, mid-pace retrospective blues rock. J.J. Cale's Travellin' Light could almost be latter-era Dire Straits in its shuffling AOR rock sound. 

Ray Charles' slow blues of Come Back Baby is also covered, as well as James Taylor's 1972 hit Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight, Stevie Wonder's 1980 single I Ain't Gonna Stand For It and an interesting 1930s jazz cover in I Want A Little Girl. Believe In Life is typical, melodious later era Clapton and Superman Inside is like so many of Eric's eighties mainstream radio rock. 

Broken Down is a fine laid-back song too that has Eric sounding like Paul Weller. Overall, this is an enjoyable album with a healthy mix of covers and originals. I liked it upon release and I still do, preferring it to Pilgrim. Check out some of those solos that he still scatters around. Clapton is still Clapton.

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