James Taylor - Gorilla, 1975

Uooh Uooh Uooh Uooh Uooh Uooh, Uooh

I’ve listened to this 2013 remastered album twice this week on my mp3 player whilst out walking. I kept thinking it was one of his latter ‘great’ albums, perhaps right on the edge of his best, but I now know it was actually his sixth, directly after Walking Man. Neither here nor there, but that surprised me. It is certainly consummate James Taylor: gentle and even genteel; peaceful and pleasant; distinctive laid-back vocal.

Opener Mexico is Taylor with signature guitar work – folkpop perfection with sweet harmonies. Second Music is the same with a happy narrative too. And then third is the wonderful cover of the Holland-Dozier-Holland How Sweet It Is [To Be Loved By You], a song Taylor has given increasing funk over the years when played live. Here it is suitably upbeat and jaunty, the saxophone solo one of two such great interjections on the album – not credited on the album cover, but David Sanborn playing - and wife Carly Simon adds her vocal here as elsewhere. Indeed, next Wandering is a beautiful version of this traditional song, the close harmonies quite exquisite, Carly Simon again. Fifth, title track Gorilla, is the joker – a song sung for smiles, the ape-sounds almost cool. Almost. It’s a long way from fourth album One Man Dog where James sang about taking drugs [Mescalito] as a positive experience – has opened up my mind - which required a printed disclaimer on an inner sleeve stating The opinions expressed in this song are not necessarily those of the supporting musicians and background vocalists.

Sixth is the brilliantly melodramatic You Make It Easy, a song in inimitable Taylor style - gosh almighty baby; yes indeed - and yet obviously a Country lyric: a song of temptation and lust and then male redemption in the rejection of those former two, I think – we assume he isn’t in the end adulterous. It’s all very un-pc when judged by today’s moral barometer as the tale of male vulnerability pitted against an enticing female sexuality places the blame firmly with the domineering, manipulative gender: hers. It does produce one of the great lyrical lines in you supply the satisfy and I’ll supply the need: such a powerful symmetry. With the saccharine strings and the unravelling storyline of a guy in a bar momentarily without the corrective restraint of his wife’s presence, it is the most wonderful musical soap opera. And there is the second superb sax solo on the album where the rising stabs of noise provide the orgasm the persona never, presumably, achieves – whether by decision or missed opportunity. There is this ambiguity, but the tease has been palpable. I think it is terrific.

This is followed with I Was A Fool To Care, a love song less theatrical but supplying another narrative paradox plotting the complexity of being in love: I was a fool to care but I don’t care even if I was a fool. Those sweeping strings are still there, but Taylor’s plucked guitar is back on comfortable territory, and the song rides out on soothing harmonies. Soaring harmonies inform next Lighthouse, this time by Graham Nash and David Crosby, and Randy Newman is on hornorgan. Ninth Angry Blues is blues and funk played with the sweet sass Taylor has made his own, especially as I’ve already said when playing live over the years, and the Dixie lilt is supplied by the great Lowell George on guitar, with him and Valerie Carter supplying further vocal support.

Penultimate is Love Songs, the lengthy oboe opening an oddity and the song itself the least memorable on the album, though the line I must just be an old softy ‘cause I still believe in love provides a neat summation of Taylor’s state of mind and perhaps the gentility of the songs as a whole. Closer Sarah Maria, a song about his daughter Sally, sweetly wraps up the sweetness of an album I have so enjoyed re-visiting, twice and throughout the writing of this review.