Here and Now

by Rob FerrierBack in the '80s, you would have been forgiven if you'd thought Tina Turner would prove to be the lasting half of one of music's notoriously volatile marriages. Back then, it seemed that Ike would be consigned to footnote status, forever a static signpost on a musical back road. Funny how things change. Now it's Tina's later music that sounds embarrassingly overdone and synth-drenched and it's Ike's blend of soul and blues that sounds, well, timeless. Stepping out on guitar and keyboard, Turner snarls and stomps through several roadhouse chestnuts with the vigor and swagger of a much younger man. If, in context, several of the lyrical choices here still sound like tangential swipes at his wife and -- given their history -- uncomfortable swipes at that, it's easy to forget on many of these tracks that this guy probably should have shuffled off to the dust heap years ago. The caveat to this record is the artificial drum overdubs that threaten to turn some of these tracks into exercises of techno embarrassment.