About Time by Steve Winwood

About Time, Steve Winwood's eighth solo studio album and his first new record since 1997, arrived in 2003 with the gloss of his 1980s hit-making years scrubbed clean off. In its place is the loose, simmering groove of Traffic, one of the bands that made him famous alongside the Spencer Davis Group and Blind Faith: a three-piece core of Hammond B-3 organ, guitar and drums, with saxophone, flute, congas and assorted percussion drifting in and out the way they did on Traffic's records from 1971 to 1974.

It suits him. Winwood has always been a keyboard player first, and here the organ is the engine, pumping and swirling underneath that soulful high tenor. The hit singles had dried up after the '80s, but this is the sound of a man who no longer needs them. In 2004, Traffic went into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Winwood in tow.

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