{"id":41470,"date":"2009-04-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-24T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/the-artful-dodger\/"},"modified":"2009-04-24T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-24T00:00:00","slug":"the-artful-dodger","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/the-artful-dodger\/","title":{"rendered":"The Artful Dodger"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four years after the tragic loss to cancer of his musical brother-in-arms and best creative foil Mick Ronson, Ian Hunter was still finding his way back.\u00a0 His 1995 outing Dirty Laundry<\/i> was a band album, making 1997\u2019s The Artful Dodger<\/i> his first true solo album since Ronson\u2019s passing in 1993.\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Sticking with Norwegian producer Bjorn Nessjoe, who had helmed the raucous, punk-tinged Laundry<\/i>, Hunter invited Laundry<\/i>-mates Honest John Plain and Darrell Bath to join Nessjoe\u2019s troupe of crack studio musicians in Norway for an album that sounded nothing like the disc it followed.\u00a0 Artful Dodger<\/i> trades in the rough edges and anarchic vibe of Laundry<\/i> for a clean, commercial sound reminiscent of Springsteen\u2019s 1992 dueling discs Human Touch<\/i> and Lucky Town<\/i>.\u00a0 It\u2019s an approach that isn\u2019t an obvious match for Hunter\u2019s earthy, British-Dylan voice, but as usual with IH, in the end the album\u2019s quality all comes down to the songs.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The principal strength and the principal weakness here are in fact the same thing \u2013 Hunter\u2019s songwriting.\u00a0 The man with the shades may in fact be the unacknowledged master of delivering uneven albums, moments of towering greatness surrounded by more pedestrian fare.\u00a0 Here the proceedings start slow and not terribly promisingly with the almost adult contemporary sound of \u201cToo Much,\u201d whose muted backbeat echoes Springsteen\u2019s \u201cStreets Of Philadelphia\u201d without achieving half that song\u2019s pathos, though it does offer one deliciously wry line: \u201cI never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity \/ Watch me screw up this one, too.\u201d<\/o:p><\/p>\n

From there Hunter pushes through three strong cuts — “Now Is the Time,” “Something to Believe In” and “Resurrection Mary” — then through the churning yet unfulfilling \u201cWalk On Water\u201d and on to — holy bejeezus why didn\u2019t you warn us? — two of the best tunes Hunter has penned in the last 30 years.\u00a0 First up, \u201c23A Swan Hill\u201d is a rumbling, ringing rocker full of the often-bitterly perceptive reminiscence that middle age brings to those who paid attention along the way.\u00a0 And \u201cMichael Picasso\u201d is just a pure stunner, Hunter\u2019s eulogy for his fallen friend Ronson.\u00a0 The arrangement — just an acoustic guitar and Hunter\u2019s vocals — leaves it all on his words and voice to carry the song, and carry it they do.\u00a0 It\u2019s magnificent and heart-wrenching in the best, most genuine way possible.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

It also makes the fall-off in quality of the rest of the album that much more glaring.\u00a0 \u201cOpen My Eyes,\u201d the title track, and the closing \u201cStill The Same\u201d are serviceable enough songs, but feel flat and insignificant after \u201cPicasso.\u201d\u00a0 And \u201cSkeletons (In Your Closet)\u201d is a leftover from the Dirty Laundry<\/i> sessions that should have stayed in the trash where it belonged.\u00a0 This is b-grade humor and strictly b-side material; putting it on the same album as the likes of \u201cSwan\u201d and \u201cPicasso\u201d only serves to underscore what a throwaway it is.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The Artful Dodger<\/i> was another step back into the light for Hunter in the sense that it proved there was still plenty of gas in the tank, even if the engine was prone to misfiring.\u00a0 An album with several good songs, several average ones, a single stinker and a couple that rank among his very best, it\u2019s a hard album to love but an easy one to find a reason to like.\u00a0 If you only need the essentials, you could probably stick to one of the latter-day Hunter collections that contain \u201c23A Swan Hill\u201d and \u201cMichael Picasso\u201d and be fine — you\u2019d save yourself a lot of money, too, since this one is out of print and hard to find.\u00a0 For the Hunter completist, though, Artful Dodger<\/i> is a bit of a hidden gem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":29854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5920],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-41470","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-ian-hunter","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41470","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=41470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41470"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41470"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}