#810 Cream - Fresh Cream

A wooly, dense combination of British blues revivalism and proto-San Francisco sound psychedelia. Repetition is employed liberally, creating spaces for Clapton's riffage and the occasional knotty Ginger Baker drum fill. Clapton's guitar work lives up to its reputation, but the album itself occupies a strange middle ground: for my money, I'd rather just have a cleaner blues rock sound, or a more fun psychadelic sound. As it is, this is heavy in too many contradictory ways, tipping over into leaden 3.5/5