BEE GEES: THIS IS WHERE I CAME IN (2001)
1) This Is Where I Came In; 2)
She Keeps On Coming; 3) Sacred Trust; 4) Wedding Day; 5) Man In The Middle; 6)
Deja Vu; 7) Technicolor Dreams; 8) Walking On Air; 9) Loose Talk Costs Lives;
10) Embrace; 11) The Extra Mile; 12) Voice In The Wilderness.
Is this really «just another bad album from the
Bee Gees», as the All-Music Guide review put it to us, even after considering
all the opposite arguments? Not quite, I would say. Indeed, «not quite» to the
extent that it almost makes me wonder — was the band on its way to eventual
recuperation and recovery of some of
the grace of old, stopped dead in its tracks by the death of Maurice, or was
this major leap in quality just an accidental fluke, caused by a temporary
climate improvement at the turn of the millennium? Make no mistake about it: This Is Where I Came In is, indeed, a
bad Bee Gees album, but it is still miles above the faceless, bodiless, and
soulless dreck they had been trying to feed us since at least E.S.P. — their best album since at
least Living Eyes, and, I would dare
say, maybe even since Main Course:
it does not have any highlights comparable with ʽYou Should Be Dancingʼ or
ʽLiving Eyesʼ, but it is, on the whole, more consistent, or, at least, more
consistently surprising, than those albums.
There can be no mistake here: the Bee Gees are
trying to get out of the nasty rut in which they had sunk when they were still
«in the summer of their years» and in which they grew old, bald, tasteless, and
irrelevant, only to be occasionally visited on holidays by the likes of Barbra
Streisand and Celine Dion. That they actually placed a photo of themselves in
their younger days on the front sleeve does not have to be interpreted as a
desire to put out another Bee Gees 1st,
but it is still a hint that is somehow
substantiated by the album contents — a good luck charm, if you wish. The
relative abundance of styles that they cover, modern and retro ones alike, is
also a good sign. No, there was not the slightest chance of an album like this
being good — only a complete miracle would have sufficed, considering that
these guys had only written, like, maybe two
really good songs in two decades. But we are here doing a career overview — and
a career overview is impossible without paying homage to the curve — and with This Is
Where I Came In, lo and behold, the curve begins to crawl upwards. Where
would it end up, had the Gibb twins not lost their lives, ten years apart from
each other?..
For the first minute, the Robin / Barry duet on
the title track is framed by nothing but sharp-picked acoustic guitars — then,
once the harmonies and full backing are in, there are still no signs of the
awful production muck that colored their previous five studio efforts — at
worst, it shares some alt-rock clichés, but for the Bee Gees, transition from
adult contemporary to alt-rock is like promotion of the highest order. This is
not to say that the song is great or anything, but the chorus is catchy, and
the slight «danger zone» feeling generated by the arrangement marks the first
time over a long, long, long period
that the brothers managed to reassert their nature as humans rather than «organic robots for middle-aged housewives».
And then there's more. ʽShe Keeps On Comingʼ is
a mediocre pop rocker, stuck in somewhere between late Kinks and early Duran
Duran — but it is a style that the Bee Gees had never covered previously in
their whole life; ʽVoice In The Wildernessʼ, despite the glossy production,
rolls on at an even faster speed, and serves as the album closer — yes, instead
of going out on a pompous balladeering note, these guys go out at the fastest
tempo they ever tried. Even if one hates the song (and there is nothing really
to hate about it), you can't help admiring them for trying; and kudos for
letting old friend Alan Kendall strike out with a fiery, flashy wah-wah solo,
the hardest he's been allowed to hit since... since...?
Another piece of territory that had never been
visited before is Tin Pan Alley: Barry's ʽTechnicolor Dreamsʼ, written and
arranged in strictly vaudevillian mode, is a harmless piece of fluff, a tribute
to Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby that is a little spoiled by oversinging, but
works well as a first and last attempt to invade alien territory; even a word
like «nostalgia» does not really apply here, since this kind of music had faded
away before the Bee Gees were even born — this is just an intentional attempt
to try out something that couldn't be more removed from their usual schtick
than anything, and again, it begs for respect, if not love. Or maybe somebody
was on a Randy Newman kick at the time — a chorus like "I'll give you
Panavision pictures, 'cause you give me Technicolor dreams" seems right up
Randy's alley.
The rest of the album is nowhere near as
«outstanding», and drifts closer to the tried and true, but even there, the
production is not quite as excessive — cheap synthesizer sounds are toned down,
with more focus on acoustic guitars and hi-tech electronics, and Barry's and
Robin's vocals are always clear in the mix (nor does Barry ever resort to
full-fledged falsetto, which is a good thing, because his upper range is so
shot anyway that the remaining frequencies automatically turn falsetto into squealing
or meawing). The songs are predictably not good: generic saccharine ballads
like Robin's ʽWedding Dayʼ, or techno-style saccharine ballads like Robin's
ʽEmbraceʼ, or perfunctory synth-rockers — like Maurice's two contributions
(ʽMan In The Middleʼ and ʽWalking On Airʼ), on which he also subjects his voice
to electronic effect treatment, maybe in an effort to give it that extra color
it had always lacked, against the background of his two more technically gifted
and individualistic brothers. It neither works nor fails... come to think of
it, like most of the things Maurice
brought to the band. (He did bring in ʽTrafalgarʼ, which was one of the band's
best songs, but he also brought in the worst of the three hairstyles, evening
things out).
It only remains to say, in conclusion, that you
hardly need to hear This Is Where I Came
In if you completely gave up on the Bee Gees after Living Eyes — not to mention if you completely gave up on the Bee
Gees with their transition to the disco age half a decade before that. But if
you did honestly sit through all of their adult contemporary muddle, year after
year, decade after decade, and wouldn't mind a little bit of an antidote, this
album will do. In any case, it is a relief that the Bee Gees ended their
creative existence on this note, and
not with Still Waters.
In conclusion — it remains only to be said
that, no matter how much suave dreck had tainted their later years, both
Maurice's death in 2003 and Robin's in 2012 were unjustly premature, and even
if, deep down inside, my belief is that the Bee Gees did not have and could not
have another Trafalgar or even Mr. Natural within them, just waiting
to be unlocked, I still like to
imagine that, had they lived on, they could have capitalized on the minor
sprouts of musical sanity displayed in this record, and at least slightly
repaired their critical reputation, maybe spurred on by renewed hipster interest
in their art-poppy past. Who knows, though, maybe it's all for the better —
that their career was cut short with this minor enigma of an album, instead of
serving us up further disappointments further on down the line.
I agree with your assesment. Despite there being several mediocre songs on the album, this is stil worth listening to, both due to the variation in styles and the brothers each contributing (instead of Barry running (ruining?) the show...).
ReplyDeleteThe title track wins heads down for me as best song on the album.
I FINALLY got around to listening to this, and I think it's as good a Swan Song as they could have had. The title track is as classic as any of their early stuff. It's well-constructed and the minor tonality ("slight danger zone") that holds the thing together reminds me a lot of Mining Disaster and other songs in that vein. The passing of Mo and Rob only makes it that much more poignant.
ReplyDeleteI hear a lot of autotune, especially on Robin's stuff, but I'm okay with it because the songs are good. They pay homage to their whole legacy, which I appreciate. It's a good album, not great, but definitely not "bad."
I CANT BELIEVE IM ACTUALLY LISTENING THIS AFTER 10 YEARS. ITS DISGUSTING. BUT I CANT STOP. SOMEONE HELPING ME, ITS SO DECADENT
ReplyDeleteFOR WORSE I KNOW EVERY SONG
ReplyDelete