Bob Weir never stopped making music but he did back away from his solo career after
Heaven Help the Fool, a misbegotten 1978 effort that found the
Grateful Dead guitarist attempting to dabble in the sun-splashed surfaces of SoCal soft rock. After that, he retreated to the boogying
Bobby & the Midnites, a side project that was abandoned after
the Dead scored a hit in 1987 with
In the Dark, then after the death of
Jerry Garcia, he wandered through several jam bands, settling on
RatDog as a vehicle for whatever songs he had. All of this is to say that when 2016's
Blue Mountain is called
Weir's best album since his 1972 debut
Ace -- and it is, without question -- there simply isn't much competition. That said,
Blue Mountain does display a level of conscious craft that is rare not only among
Weir albums but also
the Dead. Credit producer
Josh Kaufman -- an associate of
the National, who released a weighty
Dead tribute called
Day of the Dead earlier in 2016 -- and singer/songwriter
Josh Ritter, who both worked with
Weir to create a lovely, meditative salute to the "cowboy songs" dear to the guitarist's heart. Usually,
Bobby's cowboy songs in a
Dead set provided a bit of levity but
Blue Mountain floats wistfully, sometimes seeming sweet, sometimes seeming sad, but always offering some rustic comfort. It helps that
Kaufman dodges the austerity of
Rick Rubin's stark recordings for
Johnny Cash, nor does he indulge in the murk of
Daniel Lanois' collaborations with
Bob Dylan: instead, he finds a balance between simple and spacy, a blend that suits
Weir well. Against this backdrop -- sometimes consisting of no more than acoustic guitar, sometimes a warm wash of guitar --
Weir sounds weathered and warm, reflective but not mired in nostalgia, not even when he's reviving trail songs or playing with American myths. In that sense,
Blue Mountain is very much an extension of his work with
the Grateful Dead, particularly
Workingman's Dead and
American Beauty: he's tapping into legends, then spinning them for the present day. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
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