I’m officially on holidays! It has
been a busy year and it feels good to have a chance to recharge the batteries.
Today I slept in, finished my
Christmas shopping and then my cat and I enjoyed a can of tuna for lunch (he got a taste, I got the rest). Now it’s time for a blog entry, coffee with a
friend and then dinner with some other friends.
I’m not fully relaxed yet, but
with a schedule like this it shouldn’t be long.
Disc 1085 is…Sentimental Hygiene
Artist: Warren
Zevon
Year of Release: 1987
What’s up with the Cover? It’s a Giant Head cover with
what I think passes for ‘artistic’ lighting. Also, there is some weird portion
of another photo down the left hand side that makes the whole thing reminiscent
of an old cathode ray TV where the horizontal balance is on the fritz.
How I Came To Know It: This was just me digging through
Warren Zevon’s collection, buying every album I liked with the zeal of the
newly converted.
How It Stacks Up: I have 10 Warren Zevon albums, which isn’t all
of them but is all of them that I want. Of those, “Sentimental Hygiene” is
solid, but competition in the land of Warren Zevon is fierce. I comes in 6th.
Ratings: 4 stars
Rock musicians often suffer for their art, and if
they’re lucky enough to live through it they feed the results of that struggle
into yet more art. It is a vicious cycle for them but for listeners it is an
opportunity to live vicariously through their personal demons like art vampires.
Warren Zevon died far too young, but the art vampire in me is glad the demons
he explores on “Sentimental Hygiene” never killed him, but only rejuvenated his
work.
Fresh out of struggles with drug and alcohol
addition, “Sentimental Hygiene” was Zevon’s first album in five years. His gift
for songwriting survived that regenerative process, and if anything made this
collection of songs more personal than ever.
I recently watched a Carrie Fisher spoken word show
where Fisher (no stranger to tragedy herself) reminds her audience that any
experience is easier to survive if you can see the humour in it after the fact.
Zevon has this skill and it comes across in his music. Not all of these songs
are funny – how could they be? – but Zevon has always been naturally witty and “Sentimental
Hygiene” is no exception.
On “Trouble
Waiting to Happen” Zevon sings about what it is like to be a celebrity with
issues, reading about your personal life in Rolling Stone:
“I read things I
didn’t know I’d done
It sounded like a
lot fun
I guess I’ve been
bad or something
Trouble waiting to
happen.”
On “Bad Karma”
he says he “took a wrong turn on the
astral plane” and on “Detox Mansion”
he characterizes a stint in rehab as “raking
leaves with Liza/me and Liz clean up the yard”.
When he does get dark, it manifests as a deep
sadness for his past actions. On “Reconsider
Me” the “re-” stands out starkly, reminding us that Zevon knows if you just
consider all he’s done, he might come out poorly, but he’s clean now and he’s
asking for re-consideration, a fresh
start. On “Every Dog Can Shake Hands”
he notes how the music industry can be rough, managing to do it in a way that doesn’t
make you feel like he’s just another millionaire with a pill problem. He just
seems like an ordinary guy who got in over his head.
Of course, Zevon is no ordinary guy. He is an exceptional
musical talent and these songs are just as clever musically as they are
lyrically. Rock music can often feel stitched together in a haphazard fashion,
There’s an A section, a B section and a chorus, a repeat, a bridge and a fade
out.
On “Sentimental Hygiene” Zevon’s chorus is often
just a clever refrain, stitching every section together equally, and the bridge
is so naturally complimentary to the rest of the melody that it takes multiple
listens to realize where one ends and the other begins. When he employs a more standard
verse-chorus-verse-chorus approach it is similarly seamless, naturally flowing
from one section to the other as one cohesive melodic narrative.
The arrangements are also solid. “Bad Karma” cleverly slips in a bit of
sitar for south Asian flavour, but not so much as to be self-indulgent. Throughout
the album the guitar and piano are both front and centre but never competing
with one another.
The production suffers a bit from the late eighties’
love of artificial sounds, but Zevon has a new wave edge to him that makes it
less offensive than on straight rockers like Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen
who tried the same effects with less success.
Zevon is loved by his peers and his albums are often
a who’s who of musical talent in the background. “Sentimental Hygiene” is no exception
with guest spots from Neil Young, Brian Setzer, Flea, Bob Dylan, Don Henley,
Jennifer Warnes, Mike Campbell and most of REM.
Mike Campbell’s rich guitar sound is particularly
welcome on “Reconsider Me” which
gives the tune a majestic lighter-waving Tom Petty anthem feel.
The last song on the album is the worst. Zevon goes
all in on “Leave My Monkey Alone” with
the late eighties sound, and the resulting booms, thumps and pointless synth
flourishes take a meandering mess and highlight the worst parts of it. My CD is
a 2003 remaster that compounds the problem by including a second version of this
song half sung in Spanish. The other bonus track, “Nocturne” is equally awful, featuring a bunch of weird circus
sounds that go nowhere but are mercifully over in less than two minutes.
With those two extra songs wrecking the end of the
album this could drop to a 3 star album, but I liked everything before it well
enough that I’ll stick with 4 and pretend that never happened.
Best
tracks: Boom
Boom Mancini, The Factory, Trouble Waiting to Happen, Reconsider Me, Bad Karma
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