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Of the originals Dislocated Boy is a fairly standard rifferama that thunders along but doesn’t really go anywhere, the title track delivers a fairly standard weary road warrior power ballad and Heavenly Soul is rather light on for both ingredients in the two word title.

Robert Johnson’s Stones in My Passway gets a solid going over with a riff that verges on the sledgehammer side of things. The best part of Who's Been Talking? is the Howlin’ Wolf instruction to one of the participants in The London Sessions that precedes Bonamassa’s take on it. 

Willie Dixon’s I Got All You Need is a fair collection of strutting blues cliches that’s more or less surplus to requirements. It would’ve worked better with someone like Howlin’ Wolf or Muddy Waters doing the bragging, Bonamassa comes across as earnestly entreating rather than issuing a statement of carnal intent.

Bernie Marsden’s A Place in My Heart gets a respectful a power ballad treatment along the Gary Moore lines, Bill Withers’ Lonely Town Lonely Street is transformed into fairly standard blues-metal sludge, Tom Waits’ New Coat of Paint delivers a touch of light and shade and Buddy Miller’s Somewhere Trouble Don't Go doesn’t really succeed in going anywhere apart from delivering a bit of electric guitar sleight of hand and Jimmy Barnes’ Too Much Ain't Enough Love has a Barnes vocal, and with that observation made I rest my case.

Overall, Driving Towards the Daylight is a workman-like effort that will undoubtedly go down well with the appropriate demographic but I’ve heard a swag of this kind of material over the years and to me there isn’t enough to differentiate what’s on offer here from the rest of a fairly well saturated market.

© Ian Hughes 2012