Highlife | |
Type: | Studio album |
Artist: | Sonny Sharrock Band |
Cover: | Highlife (Sonny Sharrock album).jpg |
Studio: | Quantum Sound Studio in Jersey City |
Genre: | Jazz fusion, pop, rock |
Length: | 44:18 |
Label: | Enemy |
Producer: | Sonny Sharrock, Francis Manzella |
Chronology: | Sonny Sharrock |
Prev Title: | Live in New York |
Prev Year: | 1989 |
Next Title: | Faith Moves |
Next Year: | 1991 |
Highlife is a studio album by American jazz guitarist Sonny Sharrock. It was recorded at Jersey City's Quantum Sound Studio in October 1990 and released later that same year by Enemy Records.[1] [2]
In a contemporary review for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau gave Highlife an "A" and called it a "gorgeously straightforward guitar record" from someone whose musical principles reflect "a genius son" of Jimmy Smith and Jimi Hendrix. He said Sharrock expresses his themes in a dignified manner, with variation in timbre more so than in harmony, while committing to both cacophony and melody in his exploration of jazz and rock traditions.[3] Christgau named it the sixth best album of the year in his list for the Pazz & Jop critics poll.[4] In The Philadelphia Inquirer, jazz critic Francis Davis hailed Highlife as "instrumental-pop at its most energetic and uncontrived".[5] She felt the "vivacious" record was more "pop" than "jazz" but nonetheless a "persuasive argument for the advantages of maturity" in which Sharrock embraced "simplicity and directness, qualities you'd never have expected from him twenty-five years ago".[6]
In The Penguin Guide to Jazz (1992), Richard Cook and Brian Morton gave Highlife three out of four stars and found it more polished than Sharrock's previous records but with "bass-heavy" jazz fusion exercises that showed potential for more in the future.[7] AllMusic's Steve Huey was less enthusiastic, giving it three out of five stars and deeming it "something of a transitional album, catching Sharrock in the midst of figuring out where to take his music next, yet that searching quality makes it a compelling listen for fans".
Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.[8]