Whether he intended it as a summation of his career or not, that's what it amounts to. He breezes through folk songs (the rollicking title track and the heartbreaking Grace), disco-inflected dancefloor fillers, brassy Vegas rave-ups, and sad farewells to old friends and lovers. He belts out Rollin' And Tumblin', croons a couple of sappy love songs ... and the variety works. It's not a bag of disconnected bits - it's an album, a great old school pop-rock album. "I’m making albums for me and a few friends," he said. That'll be me, then. And maybe you.
As a service to listeners, I've stripped off the three bonus tracks, because, unlike on Time, they detract rather than add, and the album should end with the beautiful melancholy (he does that, too) of Cold Old London. I've also tried to come up with a couple of alternative sleeves - neither quite works, but they're better than the official horror. Take yer pick.
Whaling Stories
ReplyDeleteThanks for this, Farquhar. It passed me by entirely on release. I'm not a dyed in the wool Rod fan by any means but well disposed enough towards the old lad to give this one a spin and see what I might be missing.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a dyed-in-anywhere Ros fan, and I think that's the point. The idea that you have to subscribe in some way to the artist to enjoy the records is a mistake.
DeleteThank you, sir - you were right about Time and I trust you'll be right about this, too. I've got a soft spot for the old bugger anyway.
ReplyDeleteSal Good.
ReplyDeleteTil this site gets renamed "Rod The Mod Squad"...
I "keed"... (as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog says)
I actually OWN some R.S. (no Mick, no Keef) CDs. That '80s 4-CD job. You know the one, like the Brooooooce (gasp) "Live" one from about the same time frame. Where like they shove 4 CDs in to a LP-sized box & shoehorn a floppy booklet in as well, so as to better track the ongoing hairstyle hi-jinx, fashion mistakes and other transitions in our Hero's life...
Now who/what/when/where will be the first of ye 4-or-5 to tout the greatness of other fellow travelers and serial "career resuscitation" (2nd-3rd-4th-etc.) acts such as...............
Tom Jones?
Are there others???
(Name your poison/guiltless treasures...)
Stewart is not a "guilty pleasure". I'm not keen on the idea of guilty pleasures - like something wholeheartedly for what it is, give it some respect (and yourself, too).
DeleteAlso, he writes songs. That's pretty important, and it's this that sets him apart from Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck, and other showbiz performers. Stewart did showbiz, but he started out as a rock n' roller, and he's finished up that way. I don't have to like him as a person (because I/to) enjoy his records - that's Millennial thinking (or what passes for it). But I do love great records. Put another nickel in the jukebox. Feed my soul!
Indeed. Thinking you ought to feel guilty about your pleasures diminishes the pleasure surely?
DeleteJust touching on Tom Jones. He's a performer I've come to appreciate more in my later years - plenty of showbiz pizzazz (and I feel you might agree with me that there's nothing wrong with a bit of showbiz) and giving them what they want. I have a recording of the set he did at Glastonbury in 2009 that's just a heck of a lot of fun to listen to - performer and audience completely into it and evidently enjoying some totally guilt-free pleasure.
Jones was in New Orleans for a Jazz Fest performance a couple of years ago and was greatly received. Even better, he showed up un-announced at one of our local clubs and sang a few tunes with Jon Cleary.
DeleteTom Jones vs. Barry Manilow in a Showbiz Death Match. Book it!!!
DeleteI do appreciate the opinions (such as they are) which place Tom 'n Rod in the Same Boat.
DeleteNot at all to say that I agree with them.
By now means are EITHER One Trick Ponies. And in Apples & Oranges Dept. "comparisons," there is NO way Jose (Cuervo or not) that one can say they are cut from the same (bedazzled or not) cloth. So, if it seems as if I implied that, well, I didn't.
It's just that I couldn't for the life of me think of ONE act Of A Certain Age/Era/Genre/Etc. who had the same sort of "record" as ol' Roddy boy.
I am, if I were a betting bonehead, safely gonna say that TJ surely had more HITS... As if THAT matters (and has EVER been a Topic for rational DISS-cussion on the Foam Planet...)
(Maybe I have a future in Diplomacy...?)
(Either that or "Dipstick-oh, that's me")
You don't have a future in gambling, either.
DeleteRod the Mod 51 UK or US Top 40 singles
Tommmy Boy 40 UK or US Top 40 singles
This comes to you courtesy of the wiki-sourced useless knowledge department, you're welcome.
Thanks, Wackipedia. Oh, wait, that's the Book o' the Month selection for the 4-or-5 guys, not a volyoom in the U.K. Dept.
DeleteFarq, you two-Time-in' son of a gun, you'll get me to, like, double my Rod Stewart collection. Devious one, aren't cha?!
ReplyDeleteTom Jones had a TV series in about 1972 and there's a 5-minute clip with Little Richard that's electrifying.
ReplyDeleteOooooooof, those dance beats and echo vocals on the first track I'm listening to right now. You got me once, Farq, but I got a bad feeling about this...
ReplyDeleteYeah, no. Nope. That's a hard pass for me.
ReplyDeleteI'm usually sympatico to your taste as well as your write-ups, Farq, and maybe your hype job ("as good as anything he's ever done") was a little much, but the production on this is just atrocious. A digital sheen with electronic beats under almost everything. "Blood Red Roses" and "Rollin' And Tumblin'" are folk and blues songs, respectively, in the same way that "Cotton Eye Joe" by freakin' Rednex is a folk song. A sequenced fiddle on top of stomping dance beats, hell "Blood Red Roses" even sounds like a Rednex song. That is, hard to believe I know, not a compliment. Even if you're charitable, this sounds like ZZ Top at their mechanic mid 80s worst.
More power to those of you who can overlook (or rather: overhear) the horrendous production, but I can't. I'm not saying his new albums have to sound as if they came out in 1971, but they don't need to sound like he wants to show the young-uns how to do dance music in the clubs, either.
I'll keep the ballad trio of "Grace", "Honey Gold" and "Cold Old London" and the nice R'n'B throwback "Rest Of My Life", the rest goes in the bin.
If OBG keeps three tracks, that's a result.
DeleteBlood Red Roses was co-written with Ewan MacColl, no greater folk musician/authority than he, and is "in the folk song idiom" - the difference between that and "being a folk song" is too thin for me to measure.
The production sound doesn't worry me at all. Contemporary studio techniques don't turn me off if if they're wedded to good songwriting, arrangements, and performances. Do I care if the sound of the violin is sequenced or not? Well, I don't know that it is, for one, and for two - why should I? The melody I'm hearing there is beautiful, and not machine-made (even if it was the result of an algorithm, I'd enjoy it).
"Blood Red Roses was co-written with Ewan MacColl, no greater folk musician/authority than he, and is "in the folk song idiom" - the difference between that and "being a folk song" is too thin for me to measure."
DeleteYou mistook what I wanted to say, or maybe I said it not clearly enough. I don't doubt that Blood Red Roses is based on a folk song and I don't care about the semantics of "in a folk song vein/idiom" etc.). That's not the point I wanted to make. What I wanted to say is that it doesn't *sound* or *feel* like a folk song, considering the production choices. It's rather reminiscent of all the Eurodance/Techno adaptations of songs. I mean, "Take Me Home, Country Roads" was a country/folk song when John Denver wrote and performed it, not so much when Hermes House Band did it for the drunk Mallorca party crowd.
Which also explains the credits. MacColl gets a co-authorship credit because the lyrics are probably taken from his version (and that should probably be a trad arr credit either way, seeing how it's based on an old sea shanty). And then Rod and the producer get co-authorship credits for musical arrangement and, presumably, some lyric tweaks.
You like or at least tolerate the dance beats arrangements on these tracks, I don't. Agree to disagree, no doubt. I also threw out the biggest EDM-offenders of "Time" for that matter. I just don't care for Rod music like that.