When "Another Side of Bob Dylan" was released in 1964, it enshrined
the concept of the pop music album as a literary document -- a collection of
musical verse unified by its themes and attitudes. It was a notion that
dominated pop music for 20 years and brought forth such literary albums as
"Sergeant Pepper,"
"Bookends,"
"Superfly,"
"Blue,"
"Sail Away,"
"Street Hassle,"
"Squeezing Out Sparks,"
"London Calling" and
"The River."
In these days of video singles and rhythm samples, of Madonna and M.C. Hammer,
however, the idea of the literary album seems quaintly archaic. It now seems
quite possible -- if regrettable -- that literary pop will become a specialized
field like the blues or progressive jazz, in which underappreciated artists
make purist albums for a sharply limited but well-educated and demanding
audience. If jazz provides any example, this will lead to
both uncompromised brilliance and self-indulgent esoterica.
The new albums by Joni Mitchell and Graham Parker are symptomatic of the
transition now facing literary pop. Neither contains any songs that could
conceivably succeed on today's Top 40 radio, and while that may be more damning
to Top 40 than to Mitchell or Parker, it does suggest how
detached from the marketplace these Dylanesque singer-songwriters have become.
This is literary pop for its own sake, and that poses as many disadvantages as
advantages.
Joni Mitchell: 'Night Ride Home'
With the possible exception of fellow Canadian Leonard Cohen, Mitchell is the
most literary songwriter in contemporary pop. Her 16th album,
"Night Ride Home" (Geffen), pares away the techno-rock experiments of her previous two albums to
put the emphasis back on her frail soprano and her hollow-body jazz guitar
strumming. The lyrics dominate the foreground, and the 10 songs are unified by
the author's middle-aged perspective on her
youth and her current milieu.
There is much to admire about this album. Mitchell captures the romance of
late-night driving on the title song; the seven-minute, seven-verse epic
"Come in From the Cold" describes how midlife romance can rescue one from midlife cynicism; she deftly
weaves the
plight of a radiation janitor into a fresh retelling of the Christ story on
"Passion Play (When All the Slaves Are Free)";
"Ray's Dad's Cadillac" is a delightful look back at teenage courtship.
Accompanied by bassist Larry Klein (her husband and co-producer) and conga
drummer
Alex Acuna, Mitchell plays leisurely melodies and rippling rhythms with no big
accents and no grand gestures. In much the same way, the lyrics are a series of
small moments without any big climaxes. Many of these moments are exquisitely
crafted (a horse gallops beside the
singer's night-ride car,
"red taillights on his hide"; a woman trembles like
"washing on a line"; a hormone-mad teenage boy
"is breathing in women like oxygen"), but there are no pop hooks, no musical/verbal magnets to charge these
small epiphanies and line them all up in one direction.
This is literary pop, then, without the pop. The album is full of cultural
allusions for the educated listener (Botticelli, Mary Magdalene, pink Cadillacs
and even Yeats's
"Slouching Towards Bethlehem," which Mitchell has adapted as a chamber-rock song)
but has nothing to grab the unconverted. No single line of verse or music
stands out from the rest to demand attention, as the key lines in Mitchell's
great songs of 1968-74 did.
Mitchell also has released a long-form video,
"Refuge of the Roads." Originally shot for television in
1984, it is now available from Video Music Inc. (P.O. Box 1128, Norristown, Pa.
19404). Leaning heavily on material from Mitchell's 1982 album
"Wild Things Run Fast," it combines live concert footage with conceptual imagery and backstage super-8
footage. The
live performances (with a band led by Klein and guitarist Mike Landau) are very
good, especially the Tom Waits-like jive version of
"Raised on Robbery" and the melancholy reinterpretation of
"Woodstock." The conceptual and backstage interludes, directed by Mitchell, are
self-indulgent in the extreme, however, and bog down
a most promising film.
Graham Parker: 'Struck by Lightning'
"Struck by Lightning" (RCA) is the most literary album Graham Parker has ever made, but it is far
from his most successful. The suddenly prolific Parker has penned 15 songs,
most of them with multiple verses overflowing with extravagant
metaphors and images. He is obviously imitating the 1964-66 Dylan, but that
particular Dylan never left the impression that he needed a good editor, as
Parker does here. Even worse, Parker often commits the sin of letting his words
slip out of meter and wreck the music's rhythm.
This doesn't mean that "Struck
by Lightning" is a bad album. Every album Parker has made has contained a handful of
inspired folk-soul songs, and this is no exception. The simple love songs
"Wrapping Paper" and
"Strong Winds," with their short, succinct lines and their tight fit between words and music,
are splendid tracks that
show off Parker's vocal chops. This difference between his so-so albums, such
as this one, and his classics ("Howling Wind,"
"Heat Treatment,"
"Squeezing Out Sparks" and
"Mona Lisa's Sister") is the difference between a few good songs mixed in with filler and an album
full of good
songs.
Parker leads a British trio that includes Rumour bassist Andrew Bodnar and
Attraction drummer Pete Thomas supplemented by American guests such as Garth
Hudson, Larry Hoppen and John Sebastian. They crackle on up-tempo soul tunes
such as "And It Shook Me" or "A Brand
New Book," but they can't do anything with the long-windedness of
"She Wants So Many Things" or the ham-handed allegory of
"They Murdered the Clown." Worst of all is
"Children and Dogs (Will Always Win)," as dishonest as it is sentimental.
The Replacements: 'Don't Sell or Buy, It's Crap'
The Replacements, who come to
Lisner Auditorium tomorrow, have a new five-song EP,
"Don't Sell or Buy, It's Crap" (Sire/Reprise), that includes a very sloppy, quite irreverent version of
Dylan's
"Like a Rolling Stone," which they've retitled
"Like a Rolling Pin." In their enthusiastic bashing of the
song, however, you can hear their respect for the original sound and fury of
their fellow Minnesotan.
The performance sums up the dilemma of this unruly garage-punk quartet. The
Replacements started out as the antithesis of literary pop, but find themselves
drawn into the field by virtue of Paul Westerberg's songwriting intelligence,
which he
can't quite repress. They start out making fun of Dylan but end up admiring him
despite themselves -- and even imitating him. The Replacements' last
full-length album,
"All Shook Down" (Sire/Reprise), is nothing if not a brilliant updating of Dylanesque
alienation.
"When It Began,"
one of the best tracks from that album, is recycled on the new EP. Also
included are
"Kissin' in Action," a bouncy power-popper by Westerberg, and the garage-ish
"Satellite," a rare composition by bassist Tommy Stinson. Westerberg seems doomed to become
the new Graham Parker:
a smart, talented favorite of critics who perennially predict a commercial
breakthrough that never seems to materialize.
- Geoffrey Himes
Reproduced with kind permission from Geoffrey Himes.
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