Ending 2013 With The First Billy Joel Album: Cold Spring Harbor!

The Good: Good lyrics, Not bad vocals
The Bad: Musically limited, SHORT!
The Basics: Cold Spring Harbor was an unremarkable start to Billy Joel’s career and proves the artist had real gumption and determination (as well as lyrics-writing skills) before he became an American pop-rock mainstay.


As 2013 comes to an end, I am capping off my exploration of the works of Billy Joel with the album that started his musical career: Cold Spring Harbor. Cold Spring Harbor is a short album that only spawned hits after its reissue in the early 1980s. The fairly indistinct album is very much a piano-driven, early 1970s album that has clear influences coming out of the popularity of folk rock in American culture. Yes, if nothing else, Cold Spring Harbor illustrates to the newer fans of Billy Joel that Joel started his career in a folk-rock tradition.

Cold Spring Harbor is not bad (unless one has one of the original record pressings that has the wrong speed and thus alters the vocals on the album), but it makes it harder to believe that Billy Joel was an artist of any special destiny. The songs on the album wander from messy rock (“You Can Make Me Free”) to political folk songs (“Everybody Loves You Now,” “Falling Of The Rain”) which have more relevance in context to the Vietnam War to the usual Billy Joel romantic ballads (“She’s Got A Way,” “Turn Around”). As an artist at the beginning of his career, it is unsurprising that Cold Spring Harbor lacks a sense of ambition and refinement, but what the hook was for Joel this early in his career is something of a mystery.

With ten songs clocking out at 33:07, Cold Spring Harbor, the biggest strike against the album is that it is incredibly short. Even so, it instantly established Billy Joel as a legitimate musical artist. The album features ten songs all written by Billy Joel and he provides the lead vocals on every track. Billy Joel also plays harmonica or some variation of the piano (piano, organ, keyboard, etc.) on each song. As a new artist when the album was created, Joel received no production credit on the album and that is somewhat unsurprising.

Instrumentally, Cold Spring Harbor starts off the career of Billy Joel with the one man and a piano sound that fans would eventually expect from him. Unfortunately, the limitations of the sound are evident on the first album; “She’s Got A Way” and “Turn Around” have many of the same progressions and similarities in their tunes that make them sound very much alike. Sadly, when Joel departs from that sound, he ends up with songs like “You Can Make Me Free” which have Joel backed by a number of guitars and more active drums . . . and the song degenerates into a cacophonic mess. Most of the songs on Cold Spring Harbor are slower, piano-driven, and allow Joel’s vocals to be highlighted.

On the vocal front, Joel presents a mellow, easy vocals for most of Cold Spring Harbor. Just about the time Joel is taking on a narcoleptic sound that is putting his listeners to sleep, he breaks out a bass vocal on “Tomorrow Is Today” long before the song makes its crescendo and surprises us awake. Outside “Tomorrow Is Today,” Joel tends to stay in the higher registers of the tenor range and sticks in his safe zone. On such a short album with little musical differentiation, the vocals quickly become monotonous. “Tomorrow Is Today” is the obvious exception.

Billy Joel, as is his want, manages to be wonderfully expressive through his lyrics. One of the two bigger surprises on Cold Spring Harbor was that Joel wrote on his first time out as a solo artist a pretty impressive (and depressing) break-up song. The hopelessness of the unexplained break-up is perfectly portrayed in the lines “'Cause it's so hard to make it through the day / A man my age is very young / So I'm told / Why do I feel so old? / Tell me why Judy why” (“Why Judy Why”). It might not be the most compelling song, but it tells the story of a break-up perfectly.

At the other end of the spectrum is “You Look So Good To Me.” On “You Look So Good To Me,” Billy Joel aims for entirely superficial and he hits it as admirably as one might when they aim so low. The song is characterized by very sing-song rhymes like “Ah, you look so good to me / With my eyes open wide I can see / Ah, you feel so good to me . . . I'm feelin' the glory from that smile upon your face / You lifted me high above my ordinary place, uh huh / And I am so happy when I'm in your warm embrace” (“You Look So Good To Me”).

Of course, the main breakout song of Cold Spring Harbor is “She’s Got A Way.” “She’s Got A Way” is a pretty sappy love song that has become a standard since Joel first released it in 1971 (or, more accurately, after it gained traction in the early 1980s with the reissue of Cold Spring Harbor) and it’s good. It’s hard to argue with the raw romanticism of “She's got a smile that heals me / I don't know why it is / But I have to laugh when she reveals me / She's got a way of talkin' / I don't know why it is / But it lifts me up when we are walkin' anywhere” (“She’s Got A Way”).

Cold Spring Harbor is a Billy Joel album that suffers from lacking a spark to set it apart. There is nothing on the album that shines in such a way that makes the listener think “I have to buy this album!” Joel takes the listener on a fairly indistinct musical journey from love to anger to loss to a somewhat juvenile sense of romance (the up-tempo “You Look So Good To Me” is a flirtatious, incongruent song that does not fit the rest of the album) to the melancholy “Tomorrow Is Today.” Ultimately, the album lacks cohesion, a strong single and songs that resonate after the listener has heard them more than twice.

The high point is the moody “Tomorrow Is Today,” which is unique to this album, the worst song is “You Can Make Me Free.”

For other Billy Joel reviews, please check out:
Piano Man
Turnstiles
52nd Street
Glass Houses
The Nylon Curtain
An Innocent Man
The Bridge
Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II
Storm Front
River Of Dreams
12 Gardens Live
Fantasies & Delusions

4/10

Check out how this album stacks up against all of the other musical works I have reviewed by visiting my Music Review Index Page where works are organized best to worst!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Storm Front: Billy Joel’s Modern Folk Album Success!

The Good: Good musical storysongs, Decent vocals, Some memorable tunes
The Bad: A couple real duds
The Basics: Storm Front is essentially a rock and roll folk album from Billy Joel and it works exceptionally well as such!


Every now and then, I am pleasantly surprised when reviewing an Artist Of The Month when I encounter an album where I think I know the whole musical story before I put it in and I turn out to be completely wrong. In the case of Billy Joel, there have been a number of his albums that I was easily able to write off as the very best songs were, in fact, the radio hits and they appear on numerous compilations. Those albums where the singles sell the album and are representative of all that the artist truly has going for them ultimately leave me disappointed. When I picked up Billy Joel’s Storm Front, an album that had the song “I Go To Extremes,” which I figured would be impossible to top on the album, I was sure that would be the peak of the disc.

I am happy to say I was wrong.

While I am a big fan of “I Go To Extremes” (I suspect many people bought the album on the strength of “We Didn’t Start The Fire”), the best songs on the album are not the familiar ones. When I began listening to Storm Front, I was pretty sure I would begin with some snarky comments on the title track and how Billy Joel sounded like he had taken a bet that he could make a song about a weather report and make it into a hit. But, the truth is, despite the pure pop-rock sound of “I Go To Extremes” and “State Of Grace,” “We Didn’t Start The Fire” stretches to sound like rock and most of the album is nakedly what it sounds like: modern folk-rock. Songs like “Leningrad” or “The Downeaster ‘Alexa’” could easily have come off a Pete Seeger album by their lyrics! As a result, Storm Front is a departure for Billy Joel. The album has a diversity of sound that many of Joel’s albums lack and Storm Front still holds together as a decent album.

With only ten songs, clocking out at just over forty-five minutes, perhaps the biggest strike against Storm Front is that it is short. Billy Joel makes decent use of the time he does spend on the album, though. He wrote the music and lyrics for all ten songs (which surprised my wife because she knew “Shameless” from Garth Brooks’ cover of it!). He also provides all of the lead vocals on Storm Front and he plays at least one instrument on each track. Given that most of his instrumentation – which tend to be the dominant instruments on the tracks – are either pianos, keyboards, organs or synthesizers, it is impressive how different the various tracks on Storm Front sound! Billy Joel is also a co-producer on the album, so it is virtually undeniable that this was the album he wanted to release (at least at the time!).

Vocally, Billy Joel remains distinctive as himself, save on “When In Rome,” where he sounds like he is trying desperately to be Steve Winwood. On “We Didn’t Start The Fire,” Joel gets through a pretty extensive list of historical events and pop culture references that I have discovered while trying to sing along to is not all that easy. On both “Leningrad” and “The Downeaster ‘Alexa’” he sings his musical storysongs clearly and holds notes longer. So, he has a decent range on Storm Front outside the one song!

Instrumentally, Billy Joel is driven by keyboards on Storm Front, but he makes the songs sound completely different and yet the album holds together well. So, after the slower, lilting “The Downeaster ‘Alexa,’” Joel has “I Go To Extremes” which sounds like it is dominated by electric guitars (it’s actually pianos, organs and synths harmonizing that makes that sound, though there are guitars on that single as well). “I Go To Extremes” is followed by the slow rock ballad “Shameless,” which was covered by Garth Brooks with minimal musical variation. Despite the various musical styles and sounds, Storm Front still comes together as a cohesive album and sounds great.

Lyrically, Storm Front ranges from the obviously autobiographical (“That’s Not Her Style”) to the social and sympathetic (“The Downeaster ‘Alexa’”). While the Billy Joel fan might be happy by how Billy Joel seems eager to stick up for his wife (at the time) Christy Brinkley by setting the record straight on who she actually is, it does not make for his most compelling song ever. In fact, despite the decent lines “Some people think that she's one of those mink-coated ladies / They say she wakes up at one / And she makes the paparazzi run till dawn,” Joel gets some truly clunky rhymes like “Not that she's never done something crazy or done something wild / It's just that she's better at doing whatever suits her style / And that's not her style” on “That’s Not Her Style.” In other words, Joel opens a song that will never be mistaken for “Uptown Girl” in terms of lyrical or audio quality!

That said, Joel is exceptionally smart on most of the songs on Storm Front. In addition to the clever list song “We Didn’t Start The Fire” (which is pretty impressive for the rhymes and history), Joel has a wonderful sense of perspective on the (probably) autobiographical song “Leningrad.” The musical storysong about Cold War life in the Soviet Union and Joel’s trip there after the fall of the U.S.S.R. is surprisingly compelling. It’s easy to tear up when Joel’s song climaxes when he sings, “And so my child and I came to this place / To meet him eye to eye and face to face / He made my daughter laugh, then we embraced / We never knew what friends we had / Until we came to Leningrad” (“Leningrad”).

The only real lyrical dud on Storm Front is the title track. I get that Joel was trying to tie an interpersonal mess into a sailing song, but “Storm Front” just does not work. Indeed, it does sound like he is trying to sing a weather report when he belts out, “We've got a low pressure system and a northeast breeze / We've got a falling barometer and rising seas / We've got the cumulonimbus and a possible gale / We've got a force nine blowing on the Beaufont scale”(“Storm Front”). Sadly, it is too specific with the phrasing to be actually clever and that is why it fails.

On the whole, though, Storm Front is a real treat. The album contains plenty of songs that are not included on his “best of” compilations that are actually glaring oversights. While I still love “I Go To Extremes,” it is hard for me not to admit that “The Downeaster ‘Alexa’” is the album’s best track. The low point is “Storm Front,” but even that is not enough to discourage me from an enthusiastic recommendation of the album.

For other Billy Joel reviews, please check out:
Piano Man
Turnstiles
52nd Street
Glass Houses
The Nylon Curtain
An Innocent Man
The Bridge
Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II
River Of Dreams
12 Gardens Live
Fantasies & Delusions

8/10

Check out how this album stacks up against all of the others I have reviewed by visiting my Music Review Index Page: where albums are ranked best to worst!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Classic(al) Joel: Fantasies & Delusions Is Entirely Different For Billy Joel!

The Good: Enjoyable, easy-to-listen to, music, Well-played, Good duration
The Bad: Entirely derivative of Chopin.
The Basics: Billy Joel’s classical music album Fantasies & Delusions may as well be a lost Chopin album . . . which is both good and bad for the work!


I am always impressed when musical artists get to a point in their careers where they can do pretty much whatever they want. Once a real artist achieves a certain level of success, they gain a cache with the fans, critics and record companies and I like to see what they do with that. Many of the female musical artists I like have a tendency to burn the house down and do whatever they want, whatever they truly want, with their career after they are established. Annie Lennox fulfilled her contract and then started releasing the music she wanted to independently, Alanis Morissette’s musical style almost entirely changed after Jagged Little Pill (reviewed here!) gave her the financial freedom to create again. In the case of Billy Joel, after decades of writing and performing on albums that all went multi-platinum and selling out stadium tours (on his own or with Elton John), Joel released Fantasies & Delusions.

Fantasies & Delusions is a classical music album, entirely composed by Billy Joel and performed by pianist Richard Joo. Why does Joo perform the Piano Man’s works? Who the hell knows? It’s hard to imagine that Billy Joel couldn’t handle playing his own music (though, come to think of it, after decades at the piano does Billy Joel have Carpel Tunnel Syndrome?!), but that is how Joel went for his Classical album.

And it’s good. Fantasies & Delusions is a solid twelve-track, ten song (or Opus) musical journey that clocks out at over an hour and fourteen minutes. Played entirely by Richard Joo, Fantasies & Delusions holds together as an album that is contemplative and curious, never disturbing or soaring. Instead, the listener meanders along the cerebral tunes that Joel creates and Joo plays, taken more where the listener imagines than the composer directs.

With a sound that is very much one man and a piano, without any lyrics, Fantasies & Delusions sounds like a lost album of Chopin nocturnes and waltzes. Chopin, as my favorite composer, should be quite a compliment to Billy Joel and Fantasies & Delusions. Unfortunately, it is also the album’s greatest detraction. After listening to Fantasies & Delusions seven times, I am left with remarkably little to write about it. The ten tracks all sound like something Chopin would have created.

The journey of Fantasies & Delusions is not at all unpleasant, but it ends up as somewhat indistinct and nebulous. This is good background music for reading to or painting to, but not an inspiring or particularly evocative album. While enjoyable for those who love Classical music, it is easy to see why it is a sales anomaly in the Billy Joel library. Still, the sheer creativity of it is admirable and it is refreshing to hear Joel go in an entirely different direction with Fantasies & Delusions.

For other Billy Joel reviews, please check out:
Piano Man
Turnstiles
52nd Street
Glass Houses
The Nylon Curtain
An Innocent Man
The Bridge
Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II
River Of Dreams
12 Gardens Live

7/10

For other musical works, please visit my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Probably Nobody’s Favorite Billy Joel Album, The Bridge Is Still Not Bad!

The Good: Instrumental/musical diversity, Competent vocals, One or two songs truly come together.
The Bad: Little spark, Fairly short
The Basics: The Bridge is a strong departure from Joel’s hit album An Innocent Man, though it lacks the resonance of that album.


What do you do when you have one of the biggest albums of the early 1980s that remains one of the iconic representations of your works even through to today? Well, in the case of Billy Joel, whose seminal work might well be An Innocent Man (reviewed here!), you take a few years off from studio work and come back with The Bridge. The Bridge is known only for its singles “This Is The Time” and “A Matter If Trust,” The Bridge seems like Billy Joel went in a different direction and was actually not trying to top An Innocent Man (which, to be fair to him, makes a lot of sense – when you’ve peaked for a certain sound, go in a different direction!).

The Bridge features more in the way of instrumental accompaniment relative to An Innocent Man and while it might not hold up nearly as well as An Innocent Man, it is not a bad album, just one that seems like it is not trying to be ambitious or incredible. Outside the two radio hits, the lyrics are unremarkable and the melodies are unimpressive, though vocally Joel is solid on the entire work.

With only nine songs, clocking out at 40:06, The Bridge is a shorter album for Billy Joel. Even so, it displays his talents well. Joel wrote all of the songs (though “Code Of Silence” was written and composed with Cyndi Lauper), plays piano and provides the lead vocals on each track. Cyndi Lauper and Ray Charles both appear on The Bridge (Charles on “Baby Grand”), but Joel does most of the singing, as one might expect. His longtime producer, Phil Ramone, produced the album, so it is hard to argue that this is not Billy Joel’s musical vision.

Vocally, Billy Joel is predictably solid on The Bridge. He sings a little higher and holds notes longer on “This Is The Time,” but spends most of the album in the lower registers with songs like “Code Of Silence.” He is articulate and even when his lines have a little more crammed into them, Joel speeds up his vocals to make them fit and every word on the album is perfectly understandable. The Bridge allows Joel to say what he has to say.

More than on most of his albums, Billy Joel seems to want to make a statement with his music on The Bridge. The only song that sounds like anything on his prior albums is “Getting Closer.” The Bridge is largely an exploration of musical diversity. The album starts with the solidly rock “Running On Ice” before making a segue into the pop ballad “This Is The Time” and then returning to one of Joel’s few guitar-driven rock tracks, “A Matter Of Trust.” The album consistently shakes up the musical format and The Bridge works by making the overall work seem like an exploration of music, as opposed to feeling like the composer just didn’t know what he wanted to say musically.

Lyrically, Billy Joel shows his writing talents early on The Bridge and does not recover it for the rest of the album. The reason why “This Is The Time” and “A Matter Of Trust” resonate is because Joel had something to say that was pretty universal and well-articulated. In fact, the muted optimism of the lines “Some love is just a lie of the heart / The cold remains of what began with a passionate start / And they may not want it to end / But it will it's just a question of when / I've lived long enough to have learned / The closer you get to the fire the more you get burned / But that won't happen to us” (“A Matter Of Trust”) is easy for anyone who has had more than one romantic relationship to empathize with. Joel has a great mind for making psychology musical as he does on “A Matter Of Trust” and the longtime graduation theme “This Is The Time.”

Unfortunately, beyond the two songs, Billy Joel does not seem to have much to say on The Bridge, at least not much that is different. The lyrics are far from brilliant, like “What if she figures out you're not very smart / Or maybe she's the quiet type who's into heavy metal / Boy, you got to get it settled / Cause she's breaking your heart / Don't try to put on an act / You can't do that to a modern woman / And you're an old fashioned man / She understands the things you're doin' / She's a modern woman” (“Modern Woman”), which seems like a cheap, less articulate version of “Tell Her About It.” That stifling lack of poetry is not the norm on The Bridge, but none of the songs rise to true greatness after the two known ones.

Like many of his songs, Billy Joel tries to present musical storysongs, even on The Bridge. The big one on The Bridge is “Big Man On Mulberry Street.” On that song, Joel narrates “I cruise from Houston to Canal Street / A misfit and a rebel / I see the winds talking to themselves / And I can understand / Why is it everytime I go out / I always seem to get in trouble / I guess I made an impression on somebody / North of hester and south of grand” (“Big Man On Mulberry Street”) and, like “Modern Woman,” he seems to have less to say than he does with his past musical storysongs like “Piano Man” or even “Uptown Girl.”

The Bridge is not terrible, but it is not an album that showcases well the genius of Billy Joel. Outside “This Is The Time” and “A Matter Of Trust,” the album is mediocre, though creative, putting it in the lower ranges of an average work.

For other Billy Joel reviews, please check out:
Piano Man
Turnstiles
52nd Street
Glass Houses
The Nylon Curtain
Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II
River Of Dreams
12 Gardens Live

4.5/10

Check out how this album stacks up against all of the others I have reviewed by visiting my Music Review Index Page where works are listed from best to worst!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Fair Concert Recordings: 12 Gardens Live Succeeds In An Unremarkable Way For Billy Joel!

The Good: Decent mix of pretty wonderful songs, Lyrics
The Bad: No extraordinary reinterpretations, “Live” conceits.
The Basics: Other than hearing more mature vocals from Billy Joel, 12 Gardens Live offers fans little they have not heard already.


As I continue through my exploration of the music of Billy Joel, I find myself encountering the inevitable live album. In the case of Billy Joel, my “live” experience with Joel is his 2-album set, 12 Gardens Live. Listening to 12 Gardens Live was a positively mixed experience for me. My brother has seen Joel live in concert, I have not, but my brother never really raved about his concert experience. After months of getting in and listening to Billy Joel albums, 12 Gardens Live appeared on my doorstep as, essentially, a “best of Billy Joel live” album.

While not nearly as bad as Oasis’s Familiar To Millions (reviewed here!), 12 Gardens Live never rises to the level of a work like Janis Ian’s Live: Working Without A Net (reviewed here!) that accurately recreated a concert experience without having a forced feeling. Making a “live” album sound both true to a live experience and effortless is a tough balance and Billy Joel does not quite land it with 12 Gardens Live. That said, there are benefits to 12 Gardens Live that are absent from a typical “best of” album; for example, 12 Gardens Live features an older Billy Joel, one who has a lower, more mature voice. As a result, there is a thrill to hearing songs like “An Innocent Man,” “My Life,” and “The Entertainer” in a lower register.

Still, 12 Gardens Live is a tougher sell than it ought to be. The two-disc set features thirty songs and actually makes decent use of the compact disc medium. With two discs, each with fifteen tracks, clocking out at 75:26 and 77:31, respectively, listeners get their money’s worth out of 12 Gardens Live. Unfortunately, it is also loaded – on the second disc more than the first – with crowd noises. The crowd noises are an annoying conceit of live albums. It is easy to tell from the changes of pace and different vocals that 12 Gardens Live is a live album, without the engineered crescendos and fades of the crowd.

12 Gardens Live represents a very true exploration of the long musical career of Billy Joel. The songs are all written by Joel and he provides the lead vocals on each and every track. As well, he plays pianos on the songs and he even co-produced the album.

While the album might lack a strong x-factor or any original tracks (or delightful covers of other people’s works which might delight the fans), 12 Gardens Live is a good mix of songs from all across the career of Billy Joel. In addition to classic favorites like “New York State Of Mind” and “She’s Always A Woman,” newer hits like “River Of Dreams” and “We Didn’t Start The Fire” are included on 12 Gardens Live. In fact, of the big hits, the only notably absent Billy Joel song missing from 12 Gardens Live is “Uptown Girl” (“It’s Still Rock And Roll To Me” is on the second disc as a final, hidden, track).

The only other real detraction (outside the crowd noises and lack of any original material) to 12 Gardens Live is that none of the live interpretations of Joel’s songs are radically reinterpreted in any significant way. Instead, 12 Gardens Live seems to affirm that Billy Joel presented his songs originally the way he wanted them.

And that’s fine. Billy Joel is a wonderful songwriter and his performance on 12 Gardens Live is energetic and entertaining and well worth listening to, but for those who love the radio hits of Billy Joel (which is pretty much all this album consists of), the crowd noises are distracting and the reinterpretations are hardly significant enough to make it a part of one’s permanent collection.

For other Billy Joel reviews, please check out:
Piano Man
Turnstiles
52nd Street
Glass Houses
The Nylon Curtain
An Innocent Man
Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II
River Of Dreams

5/10

For other music reviews, please visit my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Mellow Joel: Turnstiles Is A Short, Sweet, Album!

The Good: Decent vocals, Thematic concept/execution, Sounds good
The Bad: SHORT! Some forced lines
The Basics: Billy Joel’s fourth album, Turnstiles, may not have spawned a slew of hits, but it remains a pretty solid concept album with a decent execution.


As I continue through the works of Billy Joel, I’ve been finding that he is much like I always suspected John Mellencamp was for me (which I have, admittedly, not tested): an artist whose works I enjoy when I hear them on the radio, but I’m not really missing much by not listening to his full albums. Billy Joel is good, but the A&R people around him clearly knew what they were doing as there has yet to be a song on one of his albums I’ve heard and thought “Wow, they should have released this as a single!” Instead, until Turnstiles, the albums have been very well vetted for radio play with the best tracks.

Turnstiles, however, bucks that trend and I’m not sure it does so in an entirely good way. The album is a concept album (a journey from California to New York City) and any of the songs on it sound like they could have been singles (the most recognizable songs from the album are “New York State Of Mind” and “Say Goodbye To Hollywood”). The flipside of all of the songs sounding like they could have been fine as singles (though “James” would be a tough sell) is that none of them truly stand out and make the listener feel like they are hearing something truly exceptional. In other words, Turnstiles is solid conceptually, but nothing surprises or stands out. This is a mellow, but not indistinct, Billy Joel album.

With only eight songs and a running time of 36:48, the biggest strike against Turnstiles is that it is short. Even so, it represents one of the purest expressions of Billy Joel’s creative talents of any of his albums. Despite its brevity, Billy Joel remained in control of every key creative aspect of Turnstiles. Joel wrote all eight songs and he provides the lead vocals on all of the tracks. As well, Joel played the keyboards for all of the album’s songs, though he is backed up with his touring band for Turnstiles. The fact that Joel produced Turnstiles as well, makes it undeniable that Turnstiles is exactly the album Joel wanted to release for his fourth studio work.

Vocally, Turnstiles is exactly what one expects of Billy Joel. . . at least for his early works. His voice is in the higher registers than his later works. Given that almost all of the songs are slower, lounge-safe pace ballads, Joel illustrates some decent lung capacity, especially on the album’s opener “Say Goodbye To Hollywood.” He goes faster and articulate on “Angry Young Man,” presaging by decades his ability to credibly make something like “We Didn’t Start The Fire” vocally viable. But, most of the songs are soft, sweetly-delivered ballads that have Joel singing clearly and slowly to make every word heard and every line felt.

Instrumentally, the songs on Turnstiles are virtually the definition of “soft rock.” Piano and bass-driven, the songs are slower and the percussion is muted. Joel’s concept for Turnstiles is musically unimaginative, though none of the songs sound bad. Even though “Angry Young Man” does not grab me, the music that accompanies the lyrics is fine. The closest Joel gets to upbeat is “All You Wanna Do Is Dance” and while it might be comparatively up-tempo, it is not really danceable or fast.

The slower music and somnambular vocals fit most of the lyrical tone of Turnstiles well. On Turnstiles, Billy Joel presents a musical protagonist who is more fed up and exhausted than he is angry. Tired of the decadence of California, he returns to New York and the contemplative mood permeates the album. The songs have a pretty heavy philosophical bent to most of them. When Joel sings “So we'll argue and we'll compromise / And realize that nothing's ever changed / For all our mutual experience / Our separate conclusions are the same / Now we are forced to recognize our inhumanity / Our reason coexists with our insanity / But we choose between reality and madness / It's either sadness or euphoria” (“Summer, Highland Falls”), we gather that he (or at least his musical protagonist) has come to something of an existential crisis and he is working through that.

In the process, Joel begins to belabor the time and place he wants to be. “New York State Of Mind” might be a fairly romantic piece of mood music, but objectively viewed, it is pretty weighed down by Joel’s need to sound authentic. The homesick song gets away with product placement and setting the stage with lines like “But I'm taking a Greyhound / On the Hudson River Line / I'm in a New York state of mind,” but seems backheavy when Joel laconically lists “It was so easy living day by day / Out of touch with the rhythm and blues / But now I need a little give and take / The New York Times, The Daily News” (“New York State Of Mind”). The song is good, but some of the lines seem a bit forced.

Similarly, “James” just sounds like a laundry list of complaints from the musical protagonist to the title character. Joel oscillates between lazy rhymes and not even trying to fit to a rhyme scheme as he musically states “James...we were always friends, / From our childhood days / And we made our plans, / And we had to go our seperate ways. / I went on the road / You pursued an education” (“James”) and the song seems somewhat redundant in advance of “Angry Young Man” which has a more universal statement.

Ultimately, though, Turnstiles is a solid album and a good one for setting a mood for a casual evening at home. Clearly illustrating Billy Joel’s talents, Turnstiles satisfies, even if it does not light the world on fire with its sound.

For other Billy Joel reviews, please check out:
Piano Man
52nd Street
Glass Houses
The Nylon Curtain
An Innocent Man
Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II
River Of Dreams

7/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Despite The Musical Diversity, Piano Man Does Not Quite Land.

The Good: Some wonderful lyrics, Good vocals
The Bad: Short, Musically incongruent.
The Basics: Billy Joel’s classic album Piano Man is hardly as memorable as the title track, though it does showcase much of Billy Joel’s potential.


As I find myself listening to more and more Billy Joel as I explore his works as part of my Artist Of The Month endeavor, I have been more and more impressed with the risk Columbia took on the artist. Billy Joel, like several musical artists who have made it big, was defined by a wide number of singles. In fact, Billy Joel has had a staggering number of hit songs over the course of his career. But going back to early albums like Piano Man, it is hard to see how his career endured long enough to make him a success. Most of his early albums, like Piano Man, make it easy to peg Billy Joel as a “One Hit Wonder.” While I’ve heard “Captain Jack” on Billy Joel’s compilation albums and “The Ballad Of Billy The Kid” on something animated (I’m thinking Family Guy for some reason), Piano Man has “Piano Man” and little else.

In fact, the first strains of “Travelin’ Prayer,” which opens Piano Man insinuates to the listener that the album they are about to listen to will be a mess. In fact, Joel attempts on Piano Man what many musical artists attempt but few pull off; he puts out an album with a wide range of musically diverse songs. That approach seldom works – Sophie B. Hawkins’s Timbre (reviewed here!) and Heather Nova’s South (reviewed here!) are the only two albums that come instantly to mind as “working” as albums with each song being a different musical style/sound. Joel does not quite land it with Piano Man.

Musically, the songs feature a more orchestral sound than a simpleton might assume from a piano man. But many of the songs do not quite jive, even internally. “The Ballad Of Billy The Kid,” for example, starts sounding virtually identically to a Bee-Gee’s ballad before becoming a piano-based pop song with Country music lyrics. Coming on the heels of the soft rock “You’re My Home” and in advance of the droning “Worse Comes To Worst,” the album sounds deeply fractured as opposed to an exploration of a delightful number of sounds and styles over the course of the entire musical experience.

With only ten tracks, clocking out at 43:33, Piano Man is short, though it is a good representation of Billy Joel’s talents. All of the songs were written and performed by Billy Joel, with Joel providing the primary vocals and pianos on all tracks. The album was produced by Michael Stewart, but otherwise, Joel seems to have the creative control that would make him a musical star.

Vocally, Billy Joel is clear and crisp, accenting each word. For sure, lyrically the album Piano Man is essentially monotonous – almost every song is a musical storysong – but vocally, Billy Joel shows fair range. On the title track to Piano Man, Joel holds notes long and his voice lilts through the story. He goes lower on “Worse Comes To Worst” and performs the song’s lines largely with a staccato sense of enunciation that makes every word painfully clear.

Lyrically, Piano Man is defined by songs that are observational storysongs or outright histories (in the case of “The Ballad Of Billy The Kid”). The classic song “Piano Man,” for example, memorably opens with the semi-autobiographical retelling of a night at a lounge where “There's an old man sitting next to me / Making love to his tonic and gin / He says, ‘Son can you play me a memory / I'm not really sure how it goes / But it's sad and it's sweet / And I knew it complete / When I wore a younger man's clothes.’" The song is perhaps the defining Billy Joel storysong and it is a tough act to follow; none of the eight songs that do follow it quite measure up, though some are good.

In fact, perhaps the most compelling song outside “Piano Man” on the album is “Stop In Nevada,” which sounds unlike anything else I have yet heard from Billy Joel. “Stop In Nevada” tells the story of a couple on the rocks where the woman wants more than she is getting from the marriage. Joel poetically observes “She tried for years to be a good wife / It never quite got off the ground / And all those stories of the good life / Convinced her not to hang around” (“Stop In Nevada”) and helps create a musically viable female protagonist in a way that he seldom attempts on other albums.

Despite claiming not to be a liberal publicly, Billy Joel creates an interesting atmosphere in some of his Piano Man songs in that he combines affluence and poverty in the same song. He sings of being a rambling man who is privileged enough to be in Paris, though he might not quite have enough money to pay the bills. His protagonist celebrates with impending dread with lines like “Well, you know I love my woman / And I would not let her down / And I did my share of lovin' / When I used to get around / Now I'm satisfied that she is lookin' fine / But you pay for your satisfaction / Somewhere along the line” (“Somewhere Along The Line”). Regardless of the musical inconsistencies, Joel is a gifted poet and storyteller on Piano Man.

Still, the best work here is on the compilations and Piano Man sounds more like a collection of b-sides (outside the title track) than it sounds like a cohesive album. The best track is “Piano Man,” the low point is the incredibly repetitive “Ain’t No Crime.”

For other Billy Joel reviews, please check out:
52nd Street
Glass Houses
The Nylon Curtain
An Innocent Man
Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II
River Of Dreams

4.5/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

A Blend Of Recognizable Greats And Forgettable Hits: Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II!

The Good: Some wonderful lyrics, Great voice, Decent sound
The Bad: Could be longer for my tastes, Some forgettable early songs
The Basics: Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II by Billy Joel may be one of the bestselling albums of all time, but it does not age as well as one might hope.


I think that some might be daunted to review one of the best-selling albums of all time, but I’m not one of those people. Instead, when I selected Billy Joel as my next male artist to immerse myself in the works of (yeah, that’s some spectacular grammar!), I actually had no idea that his compilation album set Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II was (at last count) the third best-selling certified album of all time (it turns out there’s an asterisk on that – this set is tied with two other albums for third). In listening to Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II, the first thing that struck me was how forgettable some of the early works of Billy Joel truly are. Given that I grew up in the 1980s, the album becomes more and more relevant late on the first disc and throughout the second disc, but it is hard for me not to think that had this been Volumes II & III together, it would have gotten a more favorable review from me.

At the crux of it is this: some of Billy Joel’s early works are clever but forgettable (“The Entertainer”) or dismally repetitive (“Captain Jack”) and might have been part of establishing Joel as an international superstar, but not they play poorly. After “Piano Man” on Disc One, there is a dearth of recognizable hits until “New York State Of Mind” and then a gap until “Just The Way You Are.” In the overall pantheon of Billy Joel’s works, it is hard to argue that “The Stranger” or “Say Goodbye To Hollywood” are truly his greatest works. That said, there is enough on Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II to please the fans and convert those who only have enjoyed Joel’s radio hits into fans!

Split into two discs, Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II is a compilation album that is distinctly the creative work of Billy Joel. With twenty-five songs on two discs clocking out at a total of one hour, fifty-three minutes, Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II does a decent job of including the hits with minimal fat. There are only two original tracks and they hold up poorly by comparison. “You’re Only Human (Second Wind)” and “The Night Is Still Young” do not hold a candle to the hits that appear on Volume III (eventually). I appreciate putting new material on Greatest Hits compilations, but it should be of a quality that matches the rest of the works and the two new songs are as unmemorable as some of the lesser hits on disc one. That said, Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II illustrates well the many talents of Billy Joel. Joel wrote the words and music to all twenty-five songs on Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II, which was a bit of surprise for me only for “New York State Of Mind.” Joel provides all of the primary vocals and he plays keyboard, piano, or other instruments on each track as well. The only major creative aspect of the album that Billy Joel is not credited with is production, though for the bulk of his career and the songs on this album, his works were produced by Phil Ramone. Given how long they worked together, it is hard to believe the works on Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II are not Joel’s musical vision.

Billy Joel’s sound is the very definition of light pop rock, especially on Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II. Recreating a 1950’s du-wop type sound on songs like “Uptown Girl” and “The Longest Time,” most of the songs are ballad and light rock piano-driven songs. While there is a (piano-driven) folksy sound to songs like “Piano Man” and an epic ballad sound to songs like “Just The Way You Are” and “She’s Got A Way,” Joel makes a series of fairly limited instrument combinations sound fresh track to track.

Vocally, Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II has Billy Joel largely singing in a mid-tenor vocal range. Joel sings clearly and articulately on every song and it is no surprise that “Piano Man” resonated so well as he articulates each and every word with perfect clarity. While Joel goes a little lower on songs like “Pressure” or holds notes longer on songs like “Allentown” and “Goodnight Saigon,” most of the songs on Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II have Billy Joel singing very similarly to on “Piano Man” with clear, direct vocalizations.

Lyrically, Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II has a pretty decent blend to it. Many of the songs are musical storysongs, much like what one might expect from folk music. Songs like “Piano Man” have a clear musical protagonist who tells a story and has something of a character arc. Joel appears to go autobiographical when he sings about the music industry with lines like “You’ve heard my latest record, it’s been on the radio / It took me years to write it, they were the best years of my life, / If you’re gonna have a hit you gotta make it fit / So they cut it down to 3:05” (“The Entertainer”) and the song is probably the best “hidden gem” for those who do not know most of Joel’s earliest works.

Many of the songs, though, are just emotional explorations of how relationships work. “Just The Way You Are” poetically embodies the feelings of love one might feel when they have found “the one.” With declarations like “I would not leave you in times of trouble / We never could have come this far / I took the good times, I’ll take the bad times / I’ll take you just the way you are” (“Just The Way You Are”) it is easy to see how Billy Joel became known around the world for great love songs.

Joel is known as well for upbeat, feel-good songs and “It’s Still Rock And Roll To Me.” Joel did lists songs remarkably well and when he wrote “Don’t waste your money on a new pair of speakers, / You get more mileage from a cheap pair of sneakers. / Next phase, new wave, dance craze, anyways / It’s still rock and roll to me” (“It’s Still Rock And Roll To Me”) it sounded incredibly fresh. On Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II, Joel’s rhymes sound original and fun.

Ultimately, Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II is a good example of Joel’s popular works, but given that there are at least two more compilations that have all of these songs and more, it is impossible to recommend, despite being easy to enjoy.

For other Billy Joel reviews, please check out:
52nd Street
Glass Houses
The Nylon Curtain
An Innocent Man
River Of Dreams

7/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing.

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Legitimate Modern Classics: River Of Dreams Holds Up!

The Good: Good musical diversity, Decent vocals, Some wonderful lyrics, Moments of politics
The Bad: Short, The songs that miss really miss.
The Basics: A smart and generally well-rounded album, River Of Dreams holds up beyond the radio hits the album spawned.


When it comes to modern recordings from influential musical artists over the past forty years, there are a number whose works are easily distilled down for the artist’s Greatest Hits album. When one takes the time to go back and listen to an artist’s whole repertoire (or most of it), there are very few whose works actually hold up beyond the hype of the moment or the few hits that make it onto the radio. In the case of Billy Joel, there are several albums which spawned at least four exceptional singles without having other memorable songs on the album. River Of Dreams is an exception to that. While the title track dominated the radio in 1993, none of the other singles truly landed and some of the other songs, like “The Great Wall Of China” actually holds up well beyond the stated concept of the song.

River Of Dreams was the last major release from Billy Joel and had it been his final original recording, it would have been an impressive exit from the public eye for Joel. As it is, it is a good album that has glimpses of greatness and manages to project more politics into Joel’s usually personal songwriting. While Joel goes for personal catharsis for his relationship with his business manager on “The Great Wall Of China,” the song holds up well as a personal allegory as well. In fact, the only tracks that truly fail to land are the simplistic ones, like “Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel).”

With only ten songs, clocking out at 49:13, River Of Dreams is very much the work of Billy Joel. Joel wrote the words and music to all of the songs and he provides the lead vocals on each of the songs. As well, Joel provides instrumental accompaniment – usually piano, organ, or some variant of the same – on all of the songs. Joel produced “Shades Of Grey,” but otherwise the album is produced by Danny Kortchmar. It is still undeniably the creative vision and work of Billy Joel.

Musically, River Of Dreams is solid pop – save “Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)” – and it includes such memorable tunes as “All About Soul” and “The River Of Dreams.” The songs are more melancholy than Joel’s earlier works and none have the epic sound one might expect following his works on Stormfront, but the album is distinct in that almost all of the tracks sound different from one another, which is impressive given how the piano and organ are the dominant and consistent instruments on the album.

Vocally, Billy Joel has the same range he seems to always have had. He goes higher on the title track, goes lower on “All About Soul” and sounds somewhat strained on “The Great Wall Of China.” He is quiet and articulate on songs like “Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)” and “Famous Last Words.” “No Man’s Land” starts out the album with Joel singing clearly and forthrightly about industrialization and the scourge of consumerism and it works largely because his vocals are presented with little flourish and no obscuring the lines with production elements.

River Of Dreams is significant in that Joel sings some songs that are unabashedly political. While Joel publically tries to deny being liberal or pushing any sort of left of center agenda, his lyrics tell a different story on River Of Dreams. With lines like “There ain't much work out here in our consumer power base / No major industry, just miles and miles of parking space / This morning's paper says our neighbor's in a cocaine bust / Lots more to read about Lolita and suburban lust / Now we're gonna get the whole story” (“No Man’s Land”) Joel makes a bold statement about consumerism and the alienation desensitization of society today.

There are very few songs about relationships on River Of Dreams, but the ones that it does have are well-conceived. Joel has not lost his sense of poetics when he sings “There are people who have lost every trace of human kindness / There are many who have fallen, there are some who still survive / She comes to me at night and she tells me her desires / And she gives me all the love I need to keep my faith alive” (“All About Soul”). Joel makes the mundane in relationships seem fantastic and it works.

Joel also sings about uncommon topics on River Of Dreams. Billy Joel tackles religious intolerance on “Two Thousand Years.” The song simply details the progression of organized religion when he writes “In the beginning / There was the cold and the night / Prophets and angels gave us the fire and the light / Man was triumphant / Armed with the faith and the will / That even the darkest ages couldn't kill / Too many kingdoms / Too many flags on the field / So many battles, so many wounds to be healed / Time is relentless / Only true love perseveres / It's been a long time and now I'm with you / After two thousand years” (“Two Thousand Years”).

In the end, River Of Dreams manages not to be dated and most of the tracks are distinctive and interesting, which is more than can be said for the bulk of many artist’s works.

The best track is “The Great Wall Of China,” the low point is the unmemorable “Blonde Over Blue.”

For other Billy Joel reviews, please check out:
52nd Street
Glass Houses
The Nylon Curtain
An Innocent Man

8/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

The Billy Joel Album From Which So Many Of The Hits Came: An Innocent Man!

The Good: Great vocals, Engaging music, Good lyrics.
The Bad: Short, Repetitive, Outside the hits there are very few worthwhile songs.
The Basics: An Innocent Man might be the archetype for Billy Joel albums, but it lacks a real spark outside the radio hits.


The cool thing about studying a different artist each month is that sometimes one discovers that the greats of the musical world are or are not all they are hyped up to be. So, for example, with Fleetwood Mac, the classic album Tango In The Night (reviewed here!) is wonderful and spawned a number of hits, but unlike Rumours (reviewed here!), there is really nothing to the album beyond the radio hits. Such is the case with the Billy Joel album An Innocent Man. An Innocent Man is what appears to be an amazing album given that it has some of Billy Joel’s most popular and influential songs from the 1980s (“An Innocent Man,” “Uptown Girl,” “Tell Her About It,” and “The Longest Time”). Unfortunately, it has little more to the album other than that.

The rest of the songs on An Innocent Man vary between being repetitive (“Easy Money”) and grating (“Christie Lee”). While there are a few gems on the album, most notably the whimsical “Leave A Tender Moment Alone,” An Innocent Man is largely unmemorable outside of the hits that appear on every major compilation from it. It is not a bad album, but it is short and hardly essential.

With only ten tracks clocking out at 40:02, An Innocent Man is very much the work of Billy Joel. Joel wrote the words and music to all of the songs on An Innocent Man and he provides all of the lead vocals. As well, Billy Joel plays the Baldwin Acoustic Piano, Fender Rhodes, and Hammond B-3 on various songs on the album. The only major creative element that Joel does not take credit for on An Innocent Man is production. Phil Ramone once again produced the album for Billy Joel.

Vocally, An Innocent Man is a diverse album. “Leave A Tender Moment Alone” is slow and articulate, while on “An Innocent Man,” Billy Joel illustrates pretty impressive vocal range. In addition to hitting some real high notes and he holds some of the notes for a decent amount of time. The real sound of An Innocent Man is harmonies. Classics like “Tell Her About It” and “Uptown Girl” redefined – or resurrected – the sound of men harmonizing mostly in a capella form and even now the peppy songs have a freshness to them that is fun and light.

Instrumentally, An Innocent Man is piano-driven, though songs like “Uptown Girl” use the power of the human voice as the main instrument. In addition to the piano, some of the songs feature electric or acoustic guitars. The saxophone is integral to “Christie Lee,” which is all about the power of a saxophone to bed a woman! The songs are almost universally upbeat on An Innocent Man and it helped to define the sound of early 1980s pop music.

Lyrically, An Innocent Man is a good album, though the diction is common and unchallenging, as if Billy Joel wanted a sense of poetics that spoke to the masses. The album is dominated by storysongs filled with characters that interact with the world around them. While “Uptown Girl” might be Joel’s ode to Christie Brinkley, there are some non-autobiographical characters in the songs. Joel sings without any hint that he is the subject of “Christie Lee” when he sings “He was working in a night club / That’s where he played the saxophone / He used to fake to stock arrangements / He left the customers alone.” The storysongs have less universal resonances than, say, “Piano Man.”

Joel does go for the universal on songs like “Tell Her About It.” On that song, Joel just puts forth some straight-out dating philosophy. With lines like “It’s not automatically a certain guarantee / To insure yourself / You’ve got to provide communications constantly / When you love someone / You’re always insecure / And there’s only one good way / To reassure / Tell her about it / Let her know how much you care / When you can’t be with her / Tell her you wish you were there” (“Tell Her About It”) Joel paints picture of himself as the sage and he does so with real style and panache.

Not all the songs hit, though. Songs like “Easy Money” are just painfully repetitive. The title of the song repeats no less than fourteen times in the course of the brief song. It is not the only song that is horribly repetitive, but because it opens the album, it makes for a weaker track.

In the end, An Innocent Man is good, but not the essential classic some fans might want it to be. All of the best songs are widely available on compilation albums. The best song is “The Longest Time,” the low point is the unmemorable “This Night.”

For other Billy Joel reviews, please check out:
52nd Street
Glass Houses
The Nylon Curtain

7.5/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Billy Joel Channels Bruce Springsteen And The Beatles For The Nylon Curtain

The Good: Decent musical accompaniment, Fine vocals
The Bad: Decidedly mixed lyrics, Poor album cohesion, Short
The Basics: The Nylon Curtain is a more experimental work by Billy Joel . . . and not all of the experiments work particularly well for him.


One of the nice things about taking a whole month to study the works of a musical artist is that sometimes, it leads to an understanding of the artist’s body of work one does not get when they only hear that artist’s radio-played works. In the case of my current Artist Of The Month, Billy Joel, I have been discovering a level of musical variety between his works that had never clicked with me before. Despite his reputation as “The Piano Man,” much of his career had him experimenting with a wider range of instruments and several of his early 80’s albums feature a strange number of sound effects. So, when I started listening to The Nylon Curtain in high rotation, I was pleasantly surprised by how it sounded like neither 52nd Street (reviewed here!) nor Glass Houses (reviewed here!).

Even so, not all musical experiments work and The Nylon Curtain is a good example of that. While Joel explores several different musical styles, lyrically the album is not one of his strongest or most memorable and track to track, the album sounds much more erratic than creative in its different styles. It would surprise me is most fans of the works of Billy Joel pull this album off the shelf with much frequency. While not bad, it spawned few recognizable or enduring singles and the album itself becomes forgettable because it lacks songs that have a truly powerful or universal theme to them.

With only nine tracks clocking out at 41:51, The Nylon Curtain is mercifully short, because additional length was probably not what kept this album from being truly great. The Nylon Curtain does represent the creative push of Billy Joel, however, as he wrote all nine songs and he performs the lead vocals on all of the tracks. He plays the pianos, synthesizers, Hammond organ, and melodica on the album, so his talents are very evident on this album. The only creative credit he does not receive is for producing, but given that producer Phil Ramone produced so many of Joel’s other albums before this, it seems like their working relationship was good and Joel had a lot of creative input in that regard.

The issues with The Nylon Curtain start with the vocals. Billy Joel’s vocals on The Nylon Curtain make a weird transition over the course of the album. In general, he starts at the bottom of his vocal range, belting out “Allentown” with a very manly sound to it. As the album goes on, however, he goes higher pitched and strains his voice more. He also utilizes reverb and other engineering sounds so on songs like “Scandinavian Skies,” his vocals barely sound like his own. Even when he has successful blends of vocals – like including a chorus on “Goodnight Saigon” to help get the song’s message of military camaraderie across better – the album sounds a lot like The Beatles (the opening of “Where’s The Orchestra?” has Joel sounding exactly like Paul McCartney on “Yesterday”) or (on songs like “She’s Right On Time”) Bruce Springsteen.

Instrumentally, The Nylon Curtain is all over the map. While I can (in general) live with or celebrate that, on The Nylon Curtain it sounds like an album of random songs stuck together so many of the songs sound so different from one another. While there are obvious, traditional pianos on “Allentown,” “Laura,” and “Goodnight Saigon,” Joel experiments with other sounds on the album with varying degrees of success. I, for example, like the very Russian sound of the organ on “Pressure,” but the meandering piano ballad “Where’s The Orchestra?” caps off the erratic album with such a “ho-hum” feeling that it’s hard to imagine what songs were cut to make room for it on this album.

One of the consistent and defining aspects of Billy Joel’s works is that they usually have some great examples of musical storytelling. While Joel may claim to be apolitical it is clear from his working class anthem “Allentown” that he has some pretty strong feelings on how workers are treated. Even more potent is his musical story “Goodnight Saigon,” which is essentially a military anthem. When Joel sings “ “ (“Goodnight Saigon”), it is hard not to empathize with soldiers everywhere and the horrors they face.

But, unlike so many of his other works, The Nylon Curtain has some real “what the fuck?!” moments. For example, on “Pressure” he has the lines “ “ and it is hard to determine what the hell he was thinking ever letting those lines see the light of day. After all, Sesame Street is hardly a complicated concept!

As well, some of the songs on The Nylon Curtain have some painfully obvious rhymes. With lines like “ “ on “Surprises,” it is surprising that fans kept coming back to Joel after this work! There is a sadly unsophisticated quality to several of the songs on The Nylon Curtain.

The Nylon Curtain might not be a bad album, but it is the first truly unremarkable album by Billy Joel I have yet heard. Moreover, it represents the first example of an album by Joel where the best tracks on the album are all on superior compilations.

The best song is “Goodnight Saigon,” the low point is the goofy-sounding “A Room Of Our Own.”

For other Artist Of The Month selections, please check out my reviews of:
Modern Times - Bob Dylan
Rumours - Fleetwood Mac
Bridge Over Troubled Waters - Simon & Garfunkel

4/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| |

An Album Of Songs That Could Open Or Close Any Number Of Movies: Glass Houses!

The Good: Lyrics, Sound
The Bad: Short, Somewhat limited vocal range
The Basics: Billy Joel has a solid outing with Glass Houses, an album whose endurance is not limited to its radio-played singles!


The danger, I have found, in reviewing the works of an exceptionally popular musical artist years after the bulk of their work was originally released is that the temptation exists to review their classic albums with an ear toward the radio-played hits. The advantage of studying a musical artist in this way by only listening to their music is to hear their albums without the hype or history. Pure listens of just the material allow listeners now to hear what is there, not all the “stuff” surrounding the album’s creation or the celebrity of the performer. As I embark upon my study of the works of Billy Joel, I follow up my review of 52nd Street (reviewed here!) with having Glass Houses in high rotation.

Glass Houses is notable in that many of the best or most memorable songs on the album were not the radio-played hits, making it a great investment for those who are looking for a much more well-rounded version of Billy Joel’s career. While Glass Houses spawned the radio hits “You May Be Right,” “Don’t Ask Me Why” and “It’s Still Rock And Roll To Me,” the songs “I Don’t Want To Be Alone” and “Sleeping With The Television On” are at least as good. As an album, though, Glass Houses reminded me most of the Oasis album Dig Out Your Soul (reviewed here!). That album was notable in that the songs all sounded like they could carry the climax of a movie and play through the closing credits. Glass Houses sounds like the ultimate pick and choose soundtrack album for opening a bevy of 1980s movies (romantic comedies, lighter dramas). Almost every song on this album feels like it was designed to provide a musical entrance for a movie (playing over the opening credits while the camera establishes setting and characters).

Clocking out at only 35:06, one of the most serious detractions to Glass Housesis its lack of duration. This is a short album, though Billy Joel makes decent use of the time he has by presenting an array of fun-sounding songs, some of which actually go a bit deeper than their upbeat pop sound. Glass Houses is very much the work of Joel who wrote the words and music to all ten songs. Joel provides the lead vocals on all of the tracks and he plays pianos, synths, harmonica, and accordion on the various songs. In fact, the only creative credit he does not receive is for producing the album (that work is credited to Phil Ramone).

Glass Houses is a very standard pop album, with drum-driven tracks that get the toes tapping and embed their melodies in the listener’s heads. While Joel branches out with a slightly more flavorful pop sound on “Don’t Ask Me Why” and he opens some of the songs with sound effects – breaking glass for “You May Be Right” and phones ringing for “It’s Just A Fantasy” – in most ways, Glass Houses is a very safe, focused pop album. “All For Leyna” actually stands out for how it breaks up the up-tempo pop songs with a slower and somewhat painfully repetitive ballad.

Vocally, Billy Joel does not illustrate much range on Glass Houses. He stays in the mid to lower registers that he is comfortable in. However, on Glass Houses, Billy Joel manages to sing faster and more articulately than many other singers (just try singing along with “It’s Still Rock And Roll To Me” and sound as clear!) and that makes the album sound and feel upbeat even when the lyrics do not support that mood.

On the lyrics front, Billy Joel references a couple of different women as the musical protagonist of Glass Houses, but the album is far from a concept album with a consistent narrative thread. He uses “All For Leyna” as an exploration of devotion (or obsession) that does not so much focus on Leyna’s attributes as it does on the musical protagonist’s commitment to her. With lines like “We laid on the beach / Watching the tide / She didn’t tell me there were rocks / Under the waves / Right off the shore / Washed up on the sand / Barely alive / Wishing the undertow would stop / How can a man take anymore” (“All For Leyna”), he blurs the line between healthy and obsessive devotion to a partner. He makes a very sad concept sound anything but mopey, though.

That idea that the sound contradicts the message carries through Glass Houses. The sound that accompanies the lines “All night long, all night long / We’re only standing here ‘cause somebody might do somebody wrong / All night long, all night long / And we’ll be sleeping with the television on” (“Sleeping With The Television On”) is not sad, like the lonely, heartwrenching lyrics to the song might indicate. Instead, there is an almost defiant quality to the music which makes the song very interesting as opposed to depressing.

Perhaps the ultimate expression of excitement, though, comes on “I Don’t Want To Be Alone.” The song has one of the stronger musical storytelling examples on Glass Houses. On that song, Joel’s musical protagonist is a guy who is “. . . standing, waiting in the lobby / Sweating bullets in this stupid old suit / And when she sees me she busts out laughing / ‘You’re a sad sight honey, but you look so cute’ and / I don’t want to be alone anymore / I was checking you out / I was just making sure” (“I Don’t Want To Be Alone”). The song works and is enjoyable, like the bulk of the album.

In fact, Glass Houses is a strong album that only loses its punch in its final tracks, but even those songs are not bad. That makes Glass Houses worth recommending even now.

The best track is “I Don’t Want To Be Alone” (though “Sleeping With The Television On” is a close second, even above the hits from the album!) and the low point is the unmemorable penultimate song “Close To The Borderline.”

For other Artist Of The Month albums, please visit my reviews of:
Actually - Pet Shop Boys
The King Of Rock: The Complete ‘50s Masters - Elvis Presley
Accelerate - R.E.M.

8.5/10

For other music reviews, please check out my organized listing of all the music reviews I have written on my Music Review Index Page!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |