What's that sound? Dead horses being flogged? Or maybe it's barrels being scraped?
If that's your initial reaction to John Waite's "new" release, 'Downtown', it's understandable.
Almost bereft of new material, Waite seems to be turning the "re-imagining" of his back catalogue into an art form.
Only two new songs on '
Downtown'. The remainder are reworks - from his distant past with The Babys, to his most recent studio release, 2004's
'The Hard Way', which in turn was an album mostly of rerecorded tracks from
'Figure In A Landscape' (2001). Gets a bit incestuous, doesn't it?
Frustrating as this might be, for the majority of longtime fans any Waite release is better than no release.
Waite's wordy, sentimental songs like '
New York City Girl' (written with Glen Burtnik), '
Downtown' and one of the new songs,
'St Patrick's Day' never seem to me to cut it quite as sharply and deeply as the simple, lyrically economic material like
'In Dreams' (from the 'True Romance' movie) and of course
'Missing You'. The former gets a part acoustic, part electric treatment here and loses none of its melancholy. The latter sees Bluegrass darling, Alison Krauss, dueting with Waite. It's a new slant on an old song. Krauss's husky intonation adds to the song's sense of intimacy. A great song is a great song, and let's face it, this one is hard to spoil.
'Isn't It Time' and '
Headfirst' from Waite's stint with The Babys' was a nice touch. Maybe more from this era and one or two from
'Change', his first solo album, would have gone down better than the seemingly constant rerecording of material that is only a few years old.
Unfortunately, it has to be said that the cover of Dylan's
'Highway 61' was a mistake.
Elsewhere, Diane Warren's '
When I See You Smile' is as vacuous now as it was when Bad English recorded it.
'The Hard Way' and '
Keys To Heart' are rollicking little rock songs, but perhaps I didn't need them twice.
Okay John, thanks, but that's enough now. Some new product next, please.
Written by
Brian Friday, August 25, 2006
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