New album: Blurred Lines
Artist: Robin Thicke
Label: Interscope
Rating: 2 stars out of 5
Some people look to music for deep meaning, catharsis and empathy, while others need something new to giggle to for a few weeks until the next giggler pops out the end of the music industry. “Blurred Lines” is well-crafted pop candy, but like an ancient Certs found in an old jacket, it looses its luster pretty quickly.
The infamous video for the “Blurred Lines” title track features some nekkid ladies and what sounds like a sped up version of “Kiss” by Prince. If you like to go down to the club and shake it, drop it and slang it, then “Blurred Lines” will no doubt be at the top of your playlist for at least three weeks. Sometime around week four, this song will come over the speakers of Club STD and everyone will roll their eyes and claim the song has been played out.
Thanks to smartphones and their ability to make purchasing useless tripe as easy as rubbing a screen, this album will be downloaded millions of times before anyone realizes it’s as disposable as a Brawny paper towel.
To be fair, the “Blurred Lines” single is catchy in a common-cold kind of way, but the rest of the album is fairly benign. Maybe a video featuring naked fat guys is in the offing.
“Ooo La La” is a decent rewrite of the cheerful disco Michael Jackson churned out on his “Off the Wall” album, while “Ain’t No Hat 4 That” (again with the Prince reference) sounds like a New Kids on the Block b-side that was too cheesy for 1985.
“Give It 2 U” (again with the numbers) veers over into Justin Timberlake territory, but if this is bringing sexy back, then abstinence would probably be the better way to go.
The only thing saving this album from being absolutely worthless is the ballad “4 the Rest of My Life” (seriously, dude, another number?), which is presumably aimed at Thicke’s wife.
“4 the Rest of My Life” features a great falsetto vocal from Thicke and some of the cheesiest lyrics this side of a Velveeta box, but when Thicke sings about falling for his wife when they were teenagers, he seems genuine.
The shadows of Michael Jackson and Prince loom large over “Blurred Lines,” especially in Thicke’s flawless vocal delivery. Hopefully, one day Thicke will have the material to match his impressive voice.
Classic album: Any Way the Wind Blows–Anthology
Artist: J.J. Cale
Label: Mercury
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
J.J. Cale never really crafted a masterful singer/songwriter album in the tradition of Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks.” His albums were pleasant affairs that occasionally featured great songs that were turned into huge hits by artists such as Lynyrd Skynyrd and Eric Clapton.
“Any Way the Wind Blows” is a two-disc, 50-track anthology that touches on all the high points of a career that always hovered just under the radar. While Cale’s original versions of “Cocaine” and “After Midnight” won him a loyal cult following, Clapton’s renditions of both songs were huge radio hits.
Cale’s version of “After Midnight” isn’t as frenetic as Clapton’s, but the groove is still deep and the slightly darker tone is a better fit. Cale’s version of “Cocaine” is slightly funkier than Clapton’s, but the overall vibe is similar.
Another Cale track made popular by another artist was “Call Me the Breeze,” which Lynyrd Skynyrd turned into an album rock hit in 1974. Whereas Skynyrd turned the song into a vehicle for the instrumental soloists in their band, Cales’s 1972 original is a straight-up shuffle that’s just as jovial.
Plenty of Cale’s catalog is as strong as the aforementioned material. “Magnolia,” “Cryin’” and “Don’t Cry Sister” are as beautifully melancholic as anything Tom Waits or Leonard Cohen ever recorded.
The characters in the songs are down and out, but Cale plays the grizzled cheerleader. His periodic use of drum machines sometimes stiffen the rock songs, but “Durango,” “Runaround” and “Artificial Paradise” are full of Cale’s swagger.
A single-disc greatest hits is no way to discover J.J. Cale, nor is trying to buy every album he ever made all at once. “Any Way the Wind Blows” is the rare instance when all the right songs were cherry picked.
Hopefully someone will hear one of Cale’s hidden gems and give him another hit someday.
Jon Dawson’s album reviews appear every Thursday in The Free Press. Contact Jon at 252-559-1092 or jon.dawson@kinston.com. Purchase Jon’s book ‘Making Gravy in Public’ at jondawson.com.