[rating=7.00]
The front cover graphic of Santana IV is expressly designed to evoke the band’s 1969 debut album and its most apropos. With some marked but ultimately minor interruptions, the better part of this ‘reunion’ album’s hour-plus running time finds five of the original band members, augmented by two of the current ensemble’s personnel, vividly recalling the original Santana sound.
If that were not the case right from the start with the chanting in rhythm with the prominent bassline of “Yambu.” the emphasis on this work as a regrouping of the ‘classic’ Santana lineup, even as echoed in Carlos’ own liner notes, might seem somewhat overstated. Yet he band’s namesake, along with keyboardist/vocalist Gregg Rolie, drummer Michael Shrieve, percussionist Michael Carabello and guitarist Neal Schon (who joined the band when he was fifteen years old), clearly reignites their chemistry here and, in doing so, integrate percussionist Karl Perazzo and bassist Benny Rietveld within their longstanding bond. It’s almost spooky how a cut like “Anywhere You Want to Go” so vividly recalls vintage Santana: by the time the track ends at the 5:05 mark, it’s difficult to distinguish its instrumental passages from something included on this group’s second album, Abraxas.
And, in ratification of the co-production shared by the aforementioned quintet, the sequencing from that number to the atmospheric eight-minute “Fillmore East” signals the album’s coalescence. Or it might if that process wasn’t interrupted by evidence of the inclination to careerism that took Santana from his jazz/spiritual phase a la Caravanserai into the pop realm of Moonflower, then two decades later to the mega-success of Supernatural; if not for the fiery rounds of syncopation, waves of Hammond B-3 and the lightning-fast guitar trade-offs between Santana and Schon, Ronald Isley’s thin lead vocals would blunt the impact of “Love Makes the World Go Round” and “Freedom in Your Mind.”
Yet the lone jarring element arising from the sixteen tracks of Santana IV is that Gregg Rolie’s voice isn’t so recognizably gutsy as it might be on a cut such as “Choo Choo”/All Aboard.” But the presence of the quiet, acoustic based instrumental “Suenos,” compensates, at least up to the entry of its saccharine strings, and while cliched horn arrangements didn’t add much to the third Santana album in 1971, here on “Caminando,” the band more successfully accommodates those textures as seasoning to their sound (suggesting room for future expansion if they choose to pursue this direction.
Still what may actually be most impressive about this project, begun in 2013, is the complementary means by which this material, such as the balladry of “Blues Magic,” was composed in various combinations by all involved. The deep, vibrant sound of the recording maximizes its sonic contrasts, particularly during the fleet instrumental “Echizo” and that, in turn, maintains the pacing of a good live set during the latter two-thirds of the record.
In drawing on their fundamental influences for Santana IV—blues, hard rock and Latin strains— this group transcends self-consciousness and allows the music to come to them naturally. Virtually nothing sounds forced here, the musicianship instead replete with the abandon of their previous work, leavened with a self-discipline deriving from experience, a crucial element that only further elevates its resonance.
