Album Reviews

Give Jackson two or three and he’s got an exquisitely turned pop tune fitted with a great hook (or two). Give him a few more and he can produce something more majestic.

With his debut Look Sharp, Jackson rode in on the angry young auteur wave along with Elvis Costello and the terribly underappreciated Graham Parker but he quickly moved on to big band, reggae, swing and whatever musical fruit he felt was ripe for his picking.

Here, accompanied by his rhythm mates of thirty plus years, Graham Maby on bass and Dave Houghton on drums (with whom he reunited previously on 2003’s Volume 4, he tries to recapture his first album’s youthful vitality and while others have tried and failed, Jackson does it ten times, though incorporating elements of jazz, soul and other styles along with straight forward rock, making even that work without a guitar. His voice sounds remarkably unchanged in the thirty years odd years (and they have been odd!) since his debut.

Can a guy who began with the morose hit “Is She Really Going Out With Him,” return to the scene of the crime with another ballad of love gone wrong? Yes. “Wasted Time,” one of the album’s standouts, demonstrates the value of accumulating “mileage,” emotional and otherwise. Jackson makes the song’s every twist and turn count. When he sings “Maybe we could have done better,” it hits.

Equally effective in the sadness department is “Solo (So Low),” which will remind you at one point of a snippet of “Happiness is a Warm Gun,” but Jackson moves the song in other less predictable directions producing the desired emotional effect without dipping into melodrama.

While there are ballads of regret, there’s uptempo material too, like the change-celebrating Curtis Mayfield-influenced “Uptown Train,” and “Rush Across the Road,” a lovely tune about possibly rekindling an old flame. Listen casually and you’ll swear there’s got to more than merely bass, drums and piano here, but there isn’t.

The recorded sound is confounding. There’s great clarity on one level, but a thin and less than transparent quality on another. The drum recording is particularly problematic, with very distant, indistinct cymbals and an anemic snare sound. The kit is splayed across the stage, probably in part to fill in the spatial blanks given that there are but three instruments.

The imaging is odd, with a flat as a pancake soundstage. Elements intended to be pressed further back on the stage merely sound lower in level. The piano, bass, drums and vocals are flattened. The lateral picture puts almost everything center stage, in an almost mono fashion, save elements of the drum kit.

Tonally, there’s a lack of midbass and lower midrange warmth, with everything seemingly concentrated in a bulging presence region. It’s not bright, mind you, nor unpleasant, thanks in part to the great clarity, but overall an odd presentation. I’m not familiar with engineer Julie Gardner, who recorded this in East Berlin at a place called Planet Roc, but I am familiar with the mixing team and the location: Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie at The Magic Shop, in NYC. These guys have produced for Radiohead (first album), Uncle Tupelo, Warren Zevon and many others. The mix is clean. I suspect they were working with a difficult source tape (or file).

Don’t get me wrong: Rain is a good listen. It just isn’t a great one sonically, though the clarity, transient speed and instrumental definition is pretty good.

Ryko’s packaging is deluxe, including “embossed” artwork on the cover and a nicely done, thick inner sleeve with photos and lyrics. It appears to have been produced specifically for the vinyl release.

The lacquer cut by Paul Gold at Salt Mastering and 180g pressing at Brooklyn phono (I think) are up to their usually fine standards. As good as RTI? No but almost. I’ll put it to you this way: if United Nashville cut this, someone’s on their case.