POP MUSIC REVIEWS : Allman Brothers Band Plays Solo-Friendly Favorites

Last year around this time, the Allman Brothers Band reunion tour passed through town with a Greek Theatre show spunky enough to make even the most marginal fan wish it would stay reunited long enough to record a new album. It did. “Seven Turns” is the band’s first record in nine years--with a leadoff song, “Good Clean Fun,” that quickly made its way to the top of the album-rock radio airplay charts--and the group returned to a nearly-full Greek on Thursday in support of it.

As it turns out, said album is by and large pretty unremarkable stuff--stylistically true to the group’s roots, happily, but too entrenched in short, straight, unmemorable blues numbers to really show off its versatility and virtuosity. The album’s easy standout and lone instrumental, “True Gravity,” is more indicative of where the band’s greatest strengths still lie. The concert version Thursday, including bass and double-drum solos, took up the better part of a half-hour and never became unduly earthbound.

Most of the 2 1/2-hour show, of course, was given over not to new material but solo-friendly favorites dating well back into the core members’ 22-year association. Though mainstays Gregg Allman and Dickey Betts, still no slouches, are responsible for most of those oldies, the two most valuable players in this unit right now are the newest add-ons--guitarist Warren Haynes and pianist Johnny Neel, the latter especially bringing a deft, jazzy elegance to what might otherwise be predictable jams.