Robbie Robertson - Storyville
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CD Details
Artist: Robbie RobertsonEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2012-03-14
Music Label: Geffen
Soundtracks:
- Night Parade
- Hold Back The Dawn
- Go Back To Your Woods
- Soap Box Preacher
- Day Of Reckoning (Burnin' For You)
- What About Now
- Shake This Town
- Breakin' The Rules
- Resurrection
- Sign Of The Rainbow
Music reviews of Storyville
Music Review: fine music, awful songs
Rating: 1 Stars
let me explain the title of my review: the arrangements are gorgeous throughout: the nocturnal, mysterious atmosphere full of distant echoes, angelic organs, clear yet unobtrusive horns, incidental voices chiming in on the sidelines as in some sort of ecstasy - all this is maintained beautifully from one end of the album to the other, so the whole really works on two levels. On this level, you have a sort of soundtrack, or soothing lite rock at its absolute best. If you could take away Robbie's singing (and thereby effectively obliterate the actual songs within the arrangements), you'd have terrific background music that might enchant you on a hot night when you just want to relax and think your thoughts without really paying attention to the music. And, of course, the musicianship is impeccable: after all, we have here the founder of The Band, and he doesn't pick just anybody for his studio band.
On the second level, we have the core songs, i.e., what you would hear as a demo, if Robbie were singing accompanied only by his acoustic in his bedroom. Those are, with few exceptions, non-songs. Almost all follow a four-square beat that accommodates equally square lyric meter - you know what I mean: da-da-da-da-DUM/da-da-da-da-DUM. There isn't really much of any sort of melody there, it's more of a sung narration on a couple of notes, which is why when a bit of originality kicks in, as in "Go Back to Your Woods" or "What About Now," the listener is positively relieved, but the relief doesn't last long. The non-melodies, in a very old-fashioned pop structure, struggle for a catchy chorus at the end of each stanza. The success of this aspiration is middling to none. The lyrics are not terribly good either, but in the light of who wrote them, they're downright miserable. Robertson was one of the finest storytellers of the American heartland (he is Canadian, but talent knows no borders), so for him to repeat, in the nineties, images that were stale folksy pooetry by the sixties, such as "in this dusty little railroad town, where nothing ever changes while nothing remains the same" is really sad. (That line reminds me of something that would be a fitting voiceover for a fun thriller like "U-Turn".) The final song, "Sign of the Rainbow," is the nail in the coffin. Overwrought and full of spiritual mumbo jumbo, it has Robbie falsettoing (he should be strictly forbidden to do that) and Aaron Neville singing his natural soprano to make matters worse. When you read the lyrics alone, it seems like with a bit of editing the whole thing should work - there is something there that almost sounds like a decent song - but it doesn't work at all, and one is embarrassed for Robbie's mother, who has apparently lost it and makes prophecies while pointing her cane at the sky. Again, there is no song to speak of. It's vocal noodling with cringeworthy attempts at deep thoughts.
And, unfortunately, there is (sigh) Robbie's voice. Voices are always a love-it-or-leave-it proposition (viz. Dylan), and some love Robbie's voice, but I start out tolerating with ill grace his whispery efforts, and by the end of the album I have visions of nails on the blackboard. Why didn't he simply create a new band? He effectively already has one playing here, he could have gotten a singer as well. But someone must have told him he could sing, although in the days of The Band he was wise enough not to put that theory to the test.
I should mention that I like his first, eponymous solo album much more. It wasn't fabulous, but it was better and less over the top lyrically than Storyville, and it produced one of my all-time favorite songs: "Crazy River," a song possibly aided by the fact that Robbie plain talks for the better part of it, and he has a great talking baritone that would never let you imagine what happens when the man tries to sing. Both albums were highly praised by the critics; whether they were sincere or just didn't want to shoot down the hopes of a once-great musician trying to have a second career, I don't know, but I cannot join them in their approval. This album is just not good.
Description of Storyville
Storyville by Robbie RobertsonThis product is manufactured on demand using CD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.
A Canadian who grew up gazing south across the border, guitarist, songwriter and singer Robbie Robertson has built much of his best music around American culture, as witnessed by his work with the Band, built around narratives steeped in evocative American blues, folk, and R&B accents. His self-titled 1987 solo debut veered toward a more ambitious, impressionistic style that somewhat submerged his earlier sense of musical geography, but this 1991 successor finds Robertson once more rooting his songs in the Deep South, taking its title from New Orleans's fabled red-light district--the symbolic birthplace for of jazz. These songs evoke the Crescent City in the recurrent second-line rhythms, warm horn choruses, and choral call-and-response of the arrangements, while Robertson's unvarnished but indelible baritone and yearning falsetto testifies on the preachers, con men, drifters, and star- crossed lovers of his well-crafted songs. --Sam Sutherland
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