Pop music
Half undressed
Marcus Berkmann
After my sneers at middle-aged rock stars last month — for it remains true that no number of flash Armani suits can make up for a decent album once in a while two old groaners have produced perhaps the most fascinating recordings of the year so far. Bob Dylan's The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961- 1991 (Columbia) is a remarkable effort, and shows that all the legions of Dylan bores (more prevalent in the Seventies, when they could never understand why people at parties wanted to listen to records other than Blonde On Blonde) may well have been right after all. And Joni Mitchell's 17th album, Night Ride Home (Geffen), proves that middle age doesn't necessarily mean mediocrity: indeed, with its subtle, nostalgic, elegantly crafted col- lection of tunes, it is probably the best 17th album pop music has yet produced. Here, skill and technique have been honed to perfection without the usual accompanying loss of inspiration, and the result is as good as anything Mitchell has done since Hejira, 15 years ago.
In fact, it is turning into an unusually interesting spring for new releases, which is not something you can say every year. Perhaps it's the recession, but the tradition- al reluctance of pop's big names to release records at this time of year suddenly seems to be wavering. In the past, the record industry ticked over between January and May — now it needs regular infusions of celebrity to keep the momentum going. It's only a shame, then, that, Dylan and Mitchell aside, the big names are not the people making the interesting records. Chris Rea's Auberge has been a substantial disappointment after his excellent The Road To Hell, while Sting's The Soul Cages was surprisingly lacklustre. Gloria Estefan's Into The Light finds her once infectious Latin pop further diluted by sluggish main- stream rock. And as for this season's great comeback, that of the egregious Morrissey, perhaps the less said the better. Kill Uncle is quite simply feeble beyond imagination, and further proof if any were needed that without his old Smiths partner Johnny Marr, pop's greatest misery merchant has surprisingly little to offer. Even so, I doubt it's the last we've heard of him. After all, now he has really got something to be depressed about.
By contrast, my favourite record of the moment is Jellyfish's Bellybutton (Charisma). This is not an attempt to be wilfully obscure (well, not much of one anyway) — it genuinely is a highly enter- taining and accomplished commercial pop album, admittedly by a group of men with unusual beards from San Francisco. Jellyfish are fans of classic pop tunes and classic pop sounds, and have chosen their influences with a refreshing lack of good taste (they even cite Gilbert O'Sullivan). But pop in Beatles mode is the basic blueprint: the single, 'The King Is Half Undressed', is typical — tons of hooks and ideas, all whipped up into an energetic and irresistibly catchy whole, much as McCartney used to make them. It is pro- duced with gusto by the Bee Gees' old cohort Albhy Galuten, and for once an insistence on 'real instruments' doesn't sound either anachronistic or plain Tikaram dull. This is bang up to date, and the band's energy is quite contagious.
My other highlight is more of a cheat, as it has been out now for over a year. But in Britain you need singles success before anyone takes notice, and without her recent hit 'Get Here', Oleta Adams's far superior album Circle Of One (Fontana) would still be languishing in the bargain bins. As it is, it was re-released last month, went straight in at number one, and showed once again that there's a huge and usually untapped market for sophisticated pop music in its many different forms. Adams has been compared to Roberta Flack and Anita Baker, but her rich, almost fruity tones are very much her own, and her songs range from the traditional soul balladry of the single to the matchless pop of 'Rhythm Of Life', which itself has been released as a single about half a dozen times without success. It's a fine record, and a deserved hit.
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