About Xavier Rudd's Dark Shades of Blue
Dark Shades of Blue is dusky and cool, more sober than any work Xav has ever done, though don't mistake it for temperate. Guitar-driven jams expand on a sound only hinted at on previous releases, and distortion often supplants the pretty jangly guitars heard on earlier work. Mixed by Joe Barresi (Tool, Queens of the Stone Age), Dark Shades of Blue shows Xav at his most assertive, heavy and psychedelic, and while Xav's signature didgeridoo remains, along with the myriad of instruments and voices featured on other records, the results are less 'world music' than they are the makings of a truly global record.