Published on Oct 13, 1998
I always try to give an artist the benefit of the doubt when
they decide to try something new. For many casual fans, a change in
approach makes them lose interest; I’ve always tried to be more
flexible, and, I suppose, loyal to someone whose work I’ve enjoyed
in the past. I guess I figure once they’ve given me a certain
amount of pleasure, they’ve earned the right to test my patience a
little.
For example: I’m not crazy about Bruce Springsteen’s
Nebraska album, but I admire its audacity. I thought U2’s
Pop was downright annoying musically, but admit the lyrics
are as good as anything they’ve ever done. And then there’s Yes, a
band that seems to virtually alternate between great and terrible
albums… and yet, I keep buying them.
But five years later, I still haven’t managed to forgive Bruce
Hornsby for
Harbor Lights.
Hornsby’s 1986 debut
The Way It Is was an overdue breath of fresh air in the
plasticized ’80s — the rich, rolling acoustic piano melodies; the
evocative lyrics, full of images of small-town life along the
Virginia coast; the seamless construction of the songs; and the
precision of Hornsby’s tight band, The Range. The follow-up
Scenes From The Southside was, if anything, even better, a
hugely engaging and resonant song cycle of life in the South in the
late 1980s. 1990’s
A Night On The Town took the band toward a looser sound,
with less care spent on the lyrics and more on the solos, and
represented a step down on the quality scale in my mind.
Then, with
Harbor Lights, Hornsby took a swan dive off the
platform.
Apparently, at some point Hornsby decided simply playing sweet
melodies within the confines of well-constructed songs didn’t allow
him enough room to display his notable prowess on the keyboard. So,
he seems to have said to himself, the hell with structure, the hell
with melody, the hell with the fans and even the hell with the
band… let’s just stick a rhythm section in the back to keep the
beat and I’ll start playing my frigging fingers off, and for fun
maybe invite in a few guests like fusion guitarist Pat Metheny and
my old pal Jerry Garcia in here to jam along with me.
To Hornsby, I suspect
Harbor Lights felt like a declaration of independence. You
know, “I scored my hits, got the multi-album deal from the label,
and now I’m going to do whatever I damn well please musically.”
Well, what he does on
Lights may have pleased him (it must have, since he’s done
two more albums in the same style since), but for a fan of the
likes of “Mandolin Rain” and “The Valley Road,” there’s precious
little to cheer about here.
The gorgeous, flowing piano lines and tight folk-pop
arrangements of his first two albums are banished almost
completely; in their place is a fragmented, painfully
self-conscious style that seems to be trying to cram juking, atonal
jazz rhythms and wandering instrumental passages into his old song
structure. As Hornsby himself confesses in the liner notes, on this
album “no one ever accused us of playing one note when five would
do.”
In places it’s almost interesting, watching Hornsby stretch. The
title song has its moments early on, when he lets the band play
like they mean it, building up momentum into the initial choruses.
But just when you think it’s about time to wrap up and get out, he
blows the whole deal by veering off into first a horribly off-key
piano bridge and then an aimless two-minute instrumental break
where he trades pretty but irrelevant solos with Metheny.
Next up, “Talk of the Town” reveals a change in Hornsby’s
approach to singing that’s as unwelcome as the change in his
approach to the songs themselves. Rather than employing the soaring
vocal energy that brought his first two albums to life, he plays
laid-back soul man, burying what could have been a meaningful pop
tune about an interracial romance in a unwieldy jazz-singer pose
full of staccato rhythms and sing-song spoken vocals, a style that
brutally wastes his voice’s capabilities.
The rest of the album amounts to more of the same. “China Doll”
resembles the title track in that it starts off strong but then
runs off the tracks into a series of purposeless instrumental
breaks. Here his herky jerky piano fills and two-hand “aren’t I
something?” solos are nothing short of grating, and Metheny’s
patched-in guitar run is sharp but thoroughly out of place.
“Fields of Gray” shows the most promise, building up a nice head
of steam melody-wise — until he hands the solo off to a string
quartet. I mean, why stop there? Why not throw in the frigging USC
Marching Band (with all due apologies to Fleetwood Mac)? The
six-and-a-half-minute, unintentionally ironic “Pastures of Plenty”
closes the album, its three-minute lyric all but obliterated by a
series of bloated, chronically self-indulgent solos from Hornsby
and special guest noodler Garcia.
Overall,
Harbor Lights shows Hornsby turning his back on everything
that made him such a pleasure to listen to on his first two albums.
The songs lack resonance, the solos lack restraint, and the entire
exercise lacks the kind of polished craftsmanship that made his
early music such a pleasurable listen. Instead, you get Hornsby and
his pals swinging, jiving, jamming and overplaying to their hearts’
content, satisfying no one but themselves.