Tribute albums sometimes can backfire and come across as acts of extreme hubris. The name of Jimi Hendrix, who wrote the six songs on this album, appears only once, buried in teeny type in the booklet’s credits. Sure, we gather as much from the album’s title and names of the tracks, but Hendrix at least deserves cover credit. As for the music, Kennedy and his young pals perform arrangements that are exquisitely crafted and stunningly clear, but only remotely related to the originals. Most are three times as long as the songs, and dwell on riffs that Hendrix threw away in performance. The ensemble is lovely in its own way, but folksy acoustic guitar strums and genteel plucks of the cello are just not what Hendrix was about. Kennedy’s attempts to transform his violin into a psychedelic instrument–playing with harmonics to reproduce feedback, doubling a line with octaves–sound clever, but he spills his bag of tricks early on. Whoever this album is aimed at, it comes across as a gimmick.
