"Axis: Bold as Love" Album Review

The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Axis: Bold as Love (Reprise Records) 

Awakening the stardust in every being, Jimi Hendrix forms constellations out of the complex humanity found on Earth. Listeners spinning on Axis: Bold as Love, The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s sophomore album, are met with existential ideals (“If 6 was 9”) exhaled so sweetly into the mind. The American-led UK trio is back with ballads and boisterous blues that harmoniously melt on the tongue, more tasteful than the Experience’s previous debut, Are You Experienced. Seattle-born Hendrix, alongside English rhythm wing Noel Redding (bass) and Mitch Mitchell (drums), provide sound more sophisticated and lyrics more diverse.

Hendrix’s left hand smooth-sails his stratocaster, spawning serenading solos that mask complex lyrics speaking of “families living in cages,” and “the smell of a world that has burned” (“Up From the Skies”). Songs like “Little Wing” and “Bold as Love” paint incandescent canvases in the brain, so soulful and intricate with guitar-bass matrimony, wed together with drums powerful yet swift. Hendrix forms psychedelic visions like no other. A human’s rainbow of emotions (“Bold as Love”), beauty and pride in uniqueness (“If 6 Was 9”), and the undeniable vicissitudes of life (“Castle Made of Sand”) lace the art of the authentic, twangy trio. Their musicality, better than it was before, propels listeners into their songs, imagery, groove, and outer-worldly comfort. As each song starts to fade, it’s missed before it’s even over.