My first reaction whenever I think of Jimi Hendrix is always the same: phenomenal guitar playing, but mostly rather uninspiring songwriting. "Electric Ladyland" undoubtedly features some outstanding tracks—the funky "Crosstown Traffic," the two extended pieces "Voodoo Chile" (with Steve Winwood on Hammond organ) and the epic "1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)," as well as the legendary cover of "All Along the Watchtower." But it also contains a great deal of fairly ordinary blues numbers. "Electric Ladyland" is, of course, a landmark album in rock history. It offers a glimpse of where Hendrix might have taken his songwriting had he not tragically died at such a young age. But if we're being honest, the album also contains plenty of filler that is simply quite average. In my view, Hendrix never made a consistently great studio album. His guitar playing revolutionized rock music, but his formulaic blues jams quickly became something of a dead end as rock evolved at a rapid pace. So my final rating is best understood as an average between the album's two-star moments and its five-star highlights.