The Album Review Club - Week #147 - (page 1942) - Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan

RobMCFC said:
American Gothic – David Ackles

I think that it’s fair to say that this is an odd album. The title track sounds like a combination of Neil Diamond and Billy Joel playing the live soundtrack to some 1920s silent movie and most of the songs have an oddball approach.

The main issue I have us that for every nice chord change, every good lyric, he sabotages his own song with some comedy interjection. “Ballad of the Ship State” is the best example of this. When he sings “’Cos your 10 years overdue” the drama introduced by the chord changes and brass backing is great …. and then he plonks away on the piano and sounds like Dick Dastardly addressing his minions! I l do like changes in songs, but this really didn’t work.

I’ve said this before: live albums don’t always work for me and although this isn’t a live album, it feels like the soundtrack to some show that I can’t see – and that works even less. In “Oh, California!”, when he sings “I warn you…” I can imagine him in a straw boater with a cane, dancing across the stage doing jazz hands. Nice visual – doesn’t work on an album.

“Love’s Enough” is a nice enough song, well delivered, but it’s only a good song in the context of this album – outside of it, it wouldn’t rank that high. “Waiting for the Moving Van” is pleasant enough. “Blue for Billy Whitecloud” starts nicely, but before too long, Ackles is back with his imaginary straw boater/cane/jazz hands.

Another genre I don’t like is crooners – e.g. Frank Sinatra. This album has that sound in places, but at least Ackles is writing his own songs and playing the piano.

Whilst some of the music is OK, the mish-mash of styles isn’t, and I just didn’t connect with it. The lyrics tell a variety of stories, but because the music isn’t engaging, I found myself switching off from any narrative. It’s a good choice from the point of view of something different – and I could think of far worse things to listen to – but it’s best left on low in the background. If this was something my family would have played at Christmas, it’s the type of thing that would raise a feeling of nostalgia in me, but standing on its own, I just didn’t get it 5/10.
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I was about to say, my review is basically the same as Rob's and Fog's until I got to the bit comparing Ackles 'crooning' to Sinatra. Let's park whether crooning is an often pejorative term sometimes erroneously applied to really talented jazz singers and I know you were referring to the genre as a whole and using Sinatra only as an example but the implication that Ackles vocals are of a similar type and standard to Sinatra's is an egregious statement imo. I am relatively sure Miles Davis and Count Basie would have given Mr Ackles short thrift. (I always look forward to reading your reviews Rob but if I come off here as the recently arrived idiot first year wanting to take on the cock of the school, I don't care, I will fight you on this :-) )

Anyway, back to Mr Ackles he's got a variety of ideas flying around but they are too many and too incongruous. His vision seems muddled to me and I'm not sure he has the tools to pull it off anyway. There seems to be a fair bit of consensus on which are the 'good' tracks, but I agree they stand out more in comparison to the rest of the album than to the wider field. Unlike Fog I don't have a problem with literal imagery but if you are going to go down that route you have to nail it and I think mostly whatever he's trying to convey about the human experience he isn't quite acute enough.

I like that he is trying to do something different, and having had a look at his biography albeit on Wikipedia it makes sense where he is coming from, but I don't think he manages to pull it off so I'm going for 5/10 for ambition.

(Btw and maybe one for another occasion. I respect people's preference for people writing and performing their own songs, but I do think there's a risk of missing out on a world of fantastic music and musicians if you focus too much on original singer songwriters. Especially of course for music prior to the ubiquity of recording technology. There's not much surviving of the Gershwin bros performing their music and whilst George could certainly play, I have no idea if either of them could sing well, so what we are left with is the many amazing interpretations of their wonderful music.)
 
threespires said:
I was about to say, my review is basically the same as Rob's and Fog's until I got to the bit comparing Ackles 'crooning' to Sinatra. Let's park whether crooning is an often pejorative term sometimes erroneously applied to really talented jazz singers and I know you were referring to the genre as a whole and using Sinatra only as an example but the implication that Ackles vocals are of a similar type and standard to Sinatra's is an egregious statement imo. I am relatively sure Miles Davis and Count Basie would have given Mr Ackles short thrift. (I always look forward to reading your reviews Rob but if I come off here as the recently arrived idiot first year wanting to take on the cock of the school, I don't care, I will fight you on this :-) )

Anyway, back to Mr Ackles he's got a variety of ideas flying around but they are too many and too incongruous. His vision seems muddled to me and I'm not sure he has the tools to pull it off anyway. There seems to be a fair bit of consensus on which are the 'good' tracks, but I agree they stand out more in comparison to the rest of the album than to the wider field. Unlike Fog I don't have a problem with literal imagery but if you are going to go down that route you have to nail it and I think mostly whatever he's trying to convey about the human experience he isn't quite acute enough.

I like that he is trying to do something different, and having had a look at his biography albeit on Wikipedia it makes sense where he is coming from, but I don't think he manages to pull it off so I'm going for 5/10 for ambition.

(Btw and maybe one for another occasion. I respect people's preference for people writing and performing their own songs, but I do think there's a risk of missing out on a world of fantastic music and musicians if you focus too much on original singer songwriters. Especially of course for music prior to the ubiquity of recording technology. There's not much surviving of the Gershwin bros performing their music and whilst George could certainly play, I have no idea if either of them could sing well, so what we are left with is the many amazing interpretations of their wonderful music.)
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You are correct, I was referring to the crooning genre as a whole. Sinatra is just an easy figurehead/target for a genre that I don't particularly like. I don't HATE that type music - it conjures up that nostalgic feeling I was taking about before because my mum and dad always used to put on Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr at family get togethers. But it's just not a genre I get much out of - I much preferred it when my dad put a Check Berry cassette on when he was doing the washing up!

Again, artists who don't write their music is just a personal bugbear. If you like Picasso it's because of what he painted - he didn't draw the lines and let others colour it in, and if he did, there wouldn't be many people wanting to view the result! Probably a very bad example, but just a bit of fun.

There are many great songs written by people who didn't perform them - but there's such a selection of material available by people who did write their own songs, in many genres, then that's more than good enough for me. Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones and latter-day Rod Stewart can keep the grannies and Christmas CD buyers happy, but I'll retire to the kitchen, do the washing up and listen to Chuck Berry.
 
RobMCFC said:
You are correct, I was referring to the crooning genre as a whole. Sinatra is just an easy figurehead/target for a genre that I don't particularly like. I don't HATE that type music - it conjures up that nostalgic feeling I was taking about before because my mum and dad always used to put on Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr at family get togethers. But it's just not a genre I get much out of - I much preferred it when my dad put a Check Berry cassette on when he was doing the washing up!

Again, artists who don't write their music is just a personal bugbear. If you like Picasso it's because of what he painted - he didn't draw the lines and let others colour it in, and if he did, there wouldn't be many people wanting to view the result! Probably a very bad example, but just a bit of fun.

There are many great songs written by people who didn't perform them - but there's such a selection of material available by people who did write their own songs, in many genres, then that's more than good enough for me. Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones and latter-day Rod Stewart can keep the grannies and Christmas CD buyers happy, but I'll retire to the kitchen, do the washing up and listen to Chuck Berry.
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Absolutely get that and I know your analogy was only a bit of fun (and sufficiently funny too that I've decided Guernica is a bit too monochromatic for my liking so next time I get to go to see it I'm taking my magic markers). I suppose for me the difference is those paintings are there in their entirety for everyone to admire whereas there's lots of music where we don't have the 'original' (and sometimes people 'colouring in' songs shows them in a fantastic different light). A few years back Richard Thompson did a tour/album called 1000 Years of Popular Music which I really enjoyed and learnt a bit too.

But of course the beauty of this thread is in it's 'horses for courses' nature and actually American Gothic is a great choice/example of this.

I imagine doing the pots to Chuck Berry meant there was soapy water everywhere.
 
threespires said:
Absolutely get that and I know your analogy was only a bit of fun (and sufficiently funny too that I've decided Guernica is a bit too monochromatic for my liking so next time I get to go to see it I'm taking my magic markers). I suppose for me the difference is those paintings are there in their entirety for everyone to admire whereas there's lots of music where we don't have the 'original' (and sometimes people 'colouring in' songs shows them in a fantastic different light). A few years back Richard Thompson did a tour/album called 1000 Years of Popular Music which I really enjoyed and learnt a bit too.

But of course the beauty of this thread is in it's 'horses for courses' nature and actually American Gothic is a great choice/example of this.

I imagine doing the pots to Chuck Berry meant there was soapy water everywhere.
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I'm not a huge art fan but I have seen Guernica in Madrid.

Your point about Richard Thompson is a good one (and nicely linked back to the colouring analogy). By my own (admittedly warped) rules, somebody like Richard Thompson has earned the right to perform other people's songs given that he has gone to the effort of writing a large back catalogue of his own. Doesn't mean that I would listen to an album of covers by him, but a live show is slightly different.

Anyway, like you say, horses for courses and everybody has different things that they like.
 
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