For blinded-by-dollars, behind-the-times, guiltily sentimental
\nand generally just plain dopey behavior, it’s hard to match the
\nfolks who vote on the Grammy Awards. I mean, are we all clear on
\nthe fact that the Grammy they gave Bob Dylan this year, 35 years
\ninto his amazing career, was his FIRST? I’ve heard of lost
\nweekends, but that’s gotta be a new record. And remember a couple
\nof years ago when they gave
\nTime<\/i> magazine cover boys U2 the award for “Best Alternative
\nAlbum”? Even Bono acted stunned. He knows his place in the music
\nscene, and that ain’t it.<\/p>\n
No, these Grammy voters seem to have developed a sense of
\nabsurdity that would give even Monty Python pause. For further
\nevidence, I give you this year’s winner for Best Pop Album, James
\nTaylor’s very enjoyable
\nHourglass.<\/i> An absurd choice not just because Taylor thought
\nso little of his chances that he didn’t even bother attending, or
\nbecause it hit the charts twenty-five years after unrecognized
\nplatinum albums like
\nSweet Baby James<\/i> and
\nGorilla<\/i>, but because it isn’t even his best album of the
\n’90s.<\/p>\n
That title belongs to1991’s
\nNew Moon Shine<\/i>.<\/p>\n
A return to form of sorts after three solid but unspectacular
\noutings during the ’80s, this album brings together unusually
\nstrong representatives from each of Taylor’s principal musical
\napproaches: melancholy introspection, grooving funk, meaning-laden
\nstory-songs and soulful harmonizing.<\/p>\n
To the casual listener who knows Taylor only from “Fire And
\nRain” and “You’ve Got A Friend,” elements of the above description
\nmay sound a little foreign. But Taylor has always dug soul and
\nR&B music, and here he cuts loose with his affection for these
\ngenres a little more than he did in his early days. Part of the
\nimpetus seems to have come from a mini-reunion with old bandmate
\nand fellow blue-eyed soul lover Danny Kortchmar, now a successful
\nproducer (Don Henley, Billy Joel). The man once known as “Kootch”
\nco-wrote the swinging, horn-driven “Got to Stop Thinkin’ ‘Bout
\nThat,” and plays on and co-produces both it and the smartly
\narranged and keenly observed “The Frozen Man.”<\/p>\n
Taylor touches on social\/political concerns as well, movingly on
\n“Shed a Little Light,” a soaring, gospel-tinged anthem to Martin
\nLuther King, Jr., and hilariously on the Reagan\/Bush deconstruction
\nrap “Slap Leather.” One of the keys to Taylor’s talent as a
\nsongwriter is the way his essential shyness sometimes evaporates in
\nhis lyrics, catching you by surprise with raw emotions that can
\nrange from compassion to scorn to fulfillment to deep, deep
\nblues.<\/p>\n
He exploits the latter maybe a little too eagerly on the one low
\npoint on the album, “Down In The Hole.” A pop dirge of sorts, the
\nsong — inexplicably placed second on the album — takes the
\nmetaphor of depression driving you underground to ridiculous, even
\ntedious lengths. My advice is just to hit skip and keep moving past
\nthis anomaly — there’s great stuff ahead.<\/p>\n
From the point of view of a long-time fan who has been known to
\ncarry on in the JT newsgroup from time to time, maybe the most
\noverlooked song on the album is “Like Everyone She Knows.” Leading
\noff with some of the prettiest acoustic playing Taylor has ever put
\non record (and that’s saying something…), the song slowly unfolds
\naround a thirtysomething woman battling through a
\ndeer-in-the-headlights emotional paralysis at a crossroads in her
\nlife. Its message about the healing powers of solitude and patience
\n(“Tend your own fire \/ Lay low and be strong”) is sealed by an
\nachingly beautiful Branford Marsalis sax solo.<\/p>\n
There’s a lot more here… an evocatively-told tale of young
\nlove (“Copperline”)… an energetic piece of blue-eyed funk about
\nwaking up at middle age with suddenly clear eyes (“One More Go
\nRound”)… and a romp through Sam Cooke’s classic “Everybody Loves
\nTo Cha Cha Cha”… Taylor’s rich, rangy voice, seemingly stronger
\nand stronger with age, matches tones beautifully with whatever
\ngenre he’s drawing from.<\/p>\n
But some things never change. Even on this, perhaps Taylor’s
\nhappiest album, there’s a hint of tragedy.<\/p>\n
It comes nears the end in the clearly autobiographical “Oh
\nBrother,” in which the narrator tries to wish, coax, admonish and
\notherwise will a sibling through a seemingly impossible battle with
\naddiction. In one of the most moving moments on
\nHourglass<\/i> (in “Enough to Be On Your Way”), Taylor eulogizes
\nhis older brother Alex, who died in 1996 after a lifelong battle
\nwith alcohol and drugs. That outcome is foretold here. “You forgot
\nto remember to never die young” he sings to his brother, echoing
\nthe title song of his 1987 album, at the time seemingly directed at
\nthe death by overdose of his friend John Belushi. At Belushi’s
\nfuneral, Taylor sang “That Lonesome Road,” a 1981 song whose key
\nimage he repeats a decade later in “Oh Brother” — “And that moon
\nwill be \/ Shining in the trees.” What has developed out of these
\nthree songs and the real-life events surrounding them is a
\nremarkably moving song cycle about self-destruction and loss.<\/p>\n
In that sense,
\nNew Moon Shine<\/i> has it all: joy and sadness, folk and funk,
\ndense grooves and soaring vocals. The one thing it doesn’t have is
\na Grammy. To which I can only respond, so the hell what.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":24712,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5945],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-35916","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-james-taylor","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35916"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=35916"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=35916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}