Time Is the Enemy

Bassist Jonas Hellborg has played with a wide variety of illustrious frontmen and fellow first-call session musicians over the course of his long career, but I’m not sure there was ever a guitarist that brought out the joyful virtuosity in him more effectively than the brilliant and doomed Shawn Lane, who died (aged 40) just a few years after this album was compiled from a series of live shows in Hellborg’s native Sweden. Accompanied by the equally brilliant drummer Jeff Sipe (billed here as Apt. Q-258), Hellborg and Lane groove out on five funky, rockish, jazzy, and exploratory tracks that fill nearly an hour of album time. Lane’s is the most prominent voice; his guitar traverses a whole world of styles and influences, with high-flying bluesiness a constant element, but while Hellborg and Sipe give him plenty of room they’re not exactly shrinking violets either. Sipe’s grooves are muscular and lean, and Hellborg varies between slap-funk backing and lovely melodic solos.