I’m just back from dental surgery
and my freezing is wearing off. I’ve taken a painkiller but now I’m nervous it’ll
impact my writing ability. I promise to do my best to walk the line between “ouch!”
and “huh?” as carefully as possible.
That said, if I sound a little overly
harsh during this next review, it is because my mouth hurts. Also, the album
sucks. If I begin to ramble, that is the painkiller kicking in. Also, the album
bored me. Feel free to ascribe motivations for the writer’s voice as best humours
you.
Disc 916 is….Storm Front
Artist: Billy
Joel
Year of Release: 1989
What’s up with the Cover? As you may know, mariners have
long used flags to pass signals between ships. This black square inside a red
square is a storm warning. In the case of this album, it is also a warning that
there is one good song amid a sea of content that will mostly make you angry. Hence
the red.
How I Came To Know It: I bought this album against my
better judgment because it had the song “The
Downeaster Alexa” and I am a sucker for a sea shanty.
How It Stacks Up: I have a greatest hits package by Billy Joel
(which tragically does not include “The Downeaster
Alexa” and hence this review) but that doesn’t stack up. I have one other
studio album, “The Stranger” which is so far above “Storm Front” that ranking “Storm
Front” only second is kind of insulting.
Ratings: 2 stars
Billy
Joel’s got nothing much to say on “Storm Front” but don’t worry, he compensates
for it with a lot of bombast. Joel is a natural songwriter and storyteller with
a bevy of American classics to claim as his own, but sadly they don’t appear on
this record.
OK, that
was unkind. There is one song I consider a Joel classic on this record, and
that’s “The Downeaster Alexa” so
before I get back to hammering away at the other nine tracks (and before the
freezing is completely gone from my gums), let’s give the man some
well-deserved credit.
“The Downeaster Alexa” is a song about a
commercial fisherman, trying to make a living off the coast of New England in
the face of dwindling stocks and rising personal debt. This song is filled with
the mix of despair and defiance that comes when a man knows his life’s work is
collapsing around him, but steadfastly sticks to it. The captain of the Alexa
fishes deeper, travels farther, mortgages his home and does whatever he can to
continue to do the job he loves.
The melody
undulates like a proper sea shanty, and the heavy bass drums in the background
are evocative of a million different commercial fishing sounds: the thump of
the engine, the crash of the waves and the general sense that the bottom of the
ocean is very far down indeed. Yes, I’ve been commercial fishing and felt/heard
all of that. My brother has done it far more often, and this song always makes
me think of him (and worry about him when he’s at sea).
Unfortunately,
that’s almost it for the good stuff on “Storm Front.” The production is full of
pointless flourishes that make everything sound busy and the songs try to be
bigger and more important than they are.
This is
right in the middle of Joel’s marriage to Christie Brinkley and the record suggests things aren't great at home, but those suggestions are vague and deflected. Songs like “That’s Not Her Style,” “Shameless” and “State of Grace” all overreach and feel like Joel is trying to
convince himself of something rather than just speak from the heart. “I Go To Extremes” is some kind of
apology for the over-reach, while simultaneously doing more of it. Maybe these
songs would work if it weren’t for all that goddamn excess production
everywhere, but I doubt it.
I
usually love the way Joel sings a song, but on most of “Storm Front” it sounds
like he’s trying to channel Joe Cocker and falling short. His strength is
heartfelt storytelling, not bombastic blues-inspired rock. Apart from “Downeaster Alexa” the album just plays
again and again to his weaknesses.
“Storm
Front” was Joel’s most successful record since “Glass Houses” going all the way
to #4 in Canada, and #1 in the U.S. Maybe it is fitting that the worst track on
the record is also the most commercially successful. “We Didn’t Start the Fire” is just a laundry list of headlines from
the previous four decades. The best you can say about this song is that Joel
strings them all together so that they rhyme in a clever way. But so what? This
song is nothing more than sitting around saying “’member when?” to your drunk
buddy, when he’s already passed out. It is like sitting in front of the TV,
drool at the corner of the mouth, clicking through the channels.
Joel
attempts a story later with “Leningrad”
and this approach is at least more of what makes him interesting (delving into the
struggles of the individual caught in the tide of history, rather than the tide
itself). Unfortunately, “Leningrad”
isn’t that great of a song. Not bad, but just not good enough to rescue a
record this forgettable.
The
album ends with “And So It Goes”
which I have a soft spot for. It’s just piano and Joel’s mournful voice but it
captures a bitter honesty lacking earlier on the album. Here Joel strips things
down to some painful truths of a love about to be lost. In some ways “And So It Goes” is an apology (lyrically and stylistically) for the
earlier tracks. The lyrics are a bit maudlin, but having poured out my soul to
a woman more than once in my life, I can attest that maudlin is called for
sometimes.
I like “Downeaster Alexa” and “And So It Goes” but I’ve got a large
music collection with a lot of songs that do a better job of dealing with their
respective topics. I’d run through the long list of them by decade, but as “We Didn’t Start the Fire” teaches us, that
would just be annoying. Instead I’ll talk about those albums when I roll them,
even as I bid this one a not-so-fond adieu.
Best
tracks: Downeaster
Alexa, And So It Goes
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