Where Is That F/ing Team?
Pounding drums propel the opening rock cliché, Coming Home, and it thunders on purposefully. A sound start. Expectations? This will/would do: not breaking any new ground but grounded in reasonable expectations of the legendary Free singer. I’d read the earliest reviews – well, a couple, maybe just the one – and there was the inevitable reflection on how much of an inevitable decline could be put off by the quality of songs rather than a vocal that has stood the test of time.
Second Photo Shooter has an echo of Bad Company days beyond the title’s reference to [fill in this gap]. Rodger’s vocal is absolutely solid here; the other requisites are on point. Midnight Rose’s acoustic (with mandolin) start – here come the violins – is sweet enough, and Rodger’s gentler balladic vocal holds up to scrutiny here too. The song itself is a little pretentious in the way such an anthemic ‘we are not alone/we are never alone’ romantic hymn is destined to be. Slide guitar and a red-rose-dying metaphor meets more choric gravatas, relatively speaking.
Fourth Living it Up rides the riff of its wave. ‘I’m living it up in America, home of the blues, in the heart of soul’ (Memphis) and the assertion with namecheck is wholly supported by a bluesy and soulful core. Guitar licks are tight and engaging.
I think this may sound a little sarcastic, but isn’t meant to be. It is because I have heard the whole collection and am awaiting the problematic to play. Is fifth Dance in the Sun one of them? It isn’t bluesy nor soulful. ‘The hurtin’ time is over’ and it is a little jolly. ‘Are you ready to dance / are you ready to sing?’ doesn’t elicit an affirmative. And the children’s laughter at the end – the rather long, aimless ending – is naff.
I DO pick this out as I ask myself about the quality control. In a collection that up to this point is quite strong enough, why didn’t someone in the team suggest preserving that solidity? Next Take Love is similarly generic as poprock fodder. Penultimate Highway Robber is slowly (ploddingly?) OKish, a lyric celebrating the outlaw persona in a ‘yippieIeh/yippieIoh’ couple of lines that is dreadful cowboy singalong pastiche. Where was that team input?!
Closer Melting is precisely why I have been precedingly annoyed. Perhaps the best track of all, this is a blues-inflected turning-to-rock number that showcases Rodgers at his continuing songwriting and vocal strengths. Great voice here.
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