Graham Parker's double-barrelled blast of "Howlin' Wind" and
"Heat Treatment" in 1976 pre-dated by four years the debut albums of the Clash, the Sex Pistols
and Elvis Costello, and a dozen years later Parker's first two albums still
sound like the cream of Britain's punk/new wave convulsion. Parker, though, has never achieved the
commercial or mythic stature of his contemporaries, despite several more
inspiring records. One hesitates to again predict his overdue breakthrough, but
"Mona Lisa's Sister" is his best record since 1979's landmark
"Squeezing Out Sparks."
Parker and his long-time collaborator Brinsley Schwartz have created a
stripped-down sound for this new album: not much
more than Parker's folk-soul acoustic guitar, Schwartz' tasty electric fills,
and a simple-but-sure backbeat by Rumour bassist Andrew Bodnar and Rockpile drummer Terry Williams. This allows plenty
of room for Parker's voice -- and what a voice it is: a throaty
cathartic tempered by the Dylanesque anger of Parker's early career and the
Smokey Robinson-like soulfulness of his later career.
The restored clarity and authority of Parker's performance is justified by the
renewed power of his songwriting. He writes with such a sharp appreciation of
ambiguity that he can't settle for the confident answers of his colleagues.
"The Girl Isn't Ready," for instance, begins as an attack on overly strict parents, but ends by
concluding that maybe a 13-year-old girl isn't ready for sex after all. Parker
casts his light "Under the Mask of Happiness" but
holds out the hope that true love is still possible on an incandescent version
of Sam Cooke's "Cupid" and on his own true love song,
"I'm Just Your Man."
GRAHAM PARKER -- "Mona Lisa's Sister" (RCA 8316-1-R).
Appearing with Aslan Sunday at the Bayou.
- Geoffrey Himes
Reproduced with kind permission from Geoffrey Himes.
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