Following the success of \u201cCats In The Cradle,\u201d people undoubtedly had to be asking Harry Chapin, \u201cNow<\/i><\/b> what?\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, how would any artist follow up what was their biggest hit, one which catapaulted his previous album Verities & Balderdash<\/i> to number four on the Billboard<\/i> album charts\u2014the only time he would crack the top 10, and one of two times he\u2019s make it into the top 50.<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s understandable that Portrait Gallery<\/i>, Chapin\u2019s fifth studio album, was always going to be under the shadow of its more famous predecessor. And, it is indeed a step down from what he had previously done\u2014but it\u2019s not a disappointment by any stretch of the word. If anything, the disc is done in a bit by overproduction, not poor songwriting or performances.<\/p>\n
Often, there seems to be an echo on Chapin\u2019s voice, which is a bit off-putting and distracts from the stories that he tried to tell within the boundaries of these 10 songs. While there is no \u201cgotcha\u201d moment like on Verities & Balderdash<\/i>, Chapin comes close with songs like \u201cDreams Go By\u201d (which laments the loss of the hopes we have in the days of our youth), \u201cTangled Up Puppet\u201d and \u201cDirt Gets Under The Fingernails.\u201d In terms of performance, Chapin and his band remain on pointe.<\/p>\n
There is one track that, in today\u2019s day and age, comes off a little cringy\u2014namely, \u201cBabysitter.\u201d Look, I get it… it was a different time and era. Even Motorhead\u2019s \u201cJailbait\u201d makes me think twice these days. Just the idea of a 16-year-old girl schooling a 12-year-old boy in the ways of the world makes my skin crawl a little bit.<\/p>\n
One also has to remember that this album was<\/i> written and recorded in the mid-\u201970s. So, a song like \u201cBummer,\u201d replete with guitar licks that sound like they were lifted from the latest R&B track of the time, might sound a bit odd, especially knowing that Chapin got his start with essentially an acoustic setup. This is another example of the echo effect distracting from the song\u2014which, clocking in at nine minutes, actually required the listener to pay more attention to the story.<\/p>\n
Aside from \u201cDreams Go By\u201d being the sole single culled from this disc, Portrait Gallery<\/i> doesn\u2019t have tracks that you might have heard on FM radio even to this day. And, that\u2019s okay, because this disc seems to be one that demands to be taken at its own merits\u2014and, yes, even its flaws.<\/p>\n
Portrait Gallery<\/i> is not the easiest of Chapin\u2019s albums to find on CD, but if you can put aside the expectations of hearing \u201cCats In The Cradle, Part 2,\u201d you\u2019ll find there is plenty to take note of on this disc. All in all, a flawed but respectable follow-up.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6164],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-47047","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-harry-chapin","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47047","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=47047"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=47047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}