Rod Stewart’s latest is frustrating and annoying. It is because it should be so much better, but isn’t.
The opening two tracks demonstrate the potential [and I
dislike using that word which seems patronising with respect to his musical
history and talent, but…]. Opener Love Is
is a Celtic folk pop number that works in the way Stewart’s pop music does:
anthemic and here supported with fine violin. The vocal is, as ever, distinctly
the same distinctive Rod rock rasp. Second Please
is excellent: beginning rock guitar with sass that moves into a funky rhythm
and beat, the vocal at its very best – a mellowing out of that rasp – joined by
a soul chorus and then the magnificent falsetto of please which sets the aural hairs on end.
Two markers placed on the board saying 'Listen mate, I’ve
still got it'. And there’s the rub. He has but for some reason replaces this
with some of the worst schmaltz ever. Third Walking in the Sunshine isn’t a
complete disaster, but it is a pop-lite lift-listenable littleness. The
alliteration was only to give me something to say. Love and Be Loved is the requisite
reggae tune, and it won’t be nudging Bob Marley down the list of anyone’s
Reggae Favourites List for the next century or so. But it is OK to pass the time of writing that
last sentence. We Can Win is a piece of football patriotism, again with a
Celtic flavour, and considering Scotland’s recent goodish European run, and Rod’s
clear love of the game, this is also OK as a slice of Stewart sincerity.
Then we have the title song. This is a little twee. Plenty have
commented on this already, with Rod himself offering his genuine rumination on
the feelings of those who are actually in this situation – a loved one away and
off to war – and its anthemic drive is bathed in more Celtic tones, perhaps
losing some sense of purpose in the echo of sounding too much like the others.
But next Way Back Home is painfully
twee, its patriotism expressed in the most naïve and simplistic soundbites –
not for me to question sincerity here – but I do questions someone of Rod’s
lived experience and intelligence being prepared to peddle this commercial good old-fashioned British way of
tarting-up drivel, the worst example with the end-sample of Churchill’s never surrender speech. And I don’t
believe this is for the British market. I think it is to appeal to the American
market where this kind of vacuous but compulsive declaration of patriotic fervour
is fashionable.
Can We Stay Home Tonight
returns to safer ground - though not hard after the seismic shattering of the
immediate previous musical footholds - the sixties soulful chorus as a welcome
and pleasant echo of the past, and Rod’s vocal genuinely beautiful. Is this
sustained? No. Following this is another descent into tweedom with Batman Superman Spiderman, a song for
his son that would be an outstanding tribute sung regularly at his bedside as a
night-time lullaby of unconditional love, but not on a record – unless of
course the commercial targeting of a similarly schmaltz-inclined market is
entirely intentional. The vocal chorus that echoes the title line in a
whispered musical hug is woeful.
I do like The Drinking
Song that has a rawer sound, a chugging rhythm that reminds of The Faces in
as much as one will be listening out for such, and the honest account of his
drinking exploits is refreshingly direct and assertive: there’s no
sentimental-older-guy-looking-for-redemption bollocks here.
The deluxe edition does have a great offering with the
'Python Lee Jackson with Rod Steward' extended version of In a Broken Dream, and
it just proves my nostalgia is a great barrier to accepting the silly new on
this album, though I will also stand by my better judgements. I do mention because
I acknowledge many have loved and will love the material I have criticised –
just read Amazon reviews where one, for example, thinks the Batman Superman
Spiderman song is worth the price of the album. A worrying idea to my mind, but
I sense there are those other than Rod Stewart who have encouraged a marketing to
a certain audience over what should have been a sense of maintaining the
integrity of what Stewart can and should do as a musician. As I have said, he
is in fine voice. A shame he feels the need to dress it in comic-book presentations
so often on this over-long album.
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