BADFINGER: AIRWAVES (1979)
1) Airwaves; 2) Look Out
California; 3) Lost Inside Your Love; 4) Love Is Gonna Come At Last; 5)
Sympathy; 6) The Winner; 7) The Dreamer; 8) Come Down Hard; 9) Sail Away; 10*)
One More Time; 11*) Send Me Your Love; 12*) Steal My Heart; 13*) Love Can't
Hide; 14*) Can You Feel The Rain.
Slay me on the spot, but I am really somewhat
fond of this one, in spite of all the objective pressure that pressures me
into stoning it together with the rest of the critically-minded crowds. Yes, the
obligatory first impression is that this is a «Badfinger» album in name only,
one of those suspicious cases when a brand is resuscitated mostly for
commercial reasons. The whole thing was not intended to be a reunion — it just
so happened that Joey Molland, in yet another of several failed attempts to
assemble a new band, hooked up with Evans, among other guys who never had
anything to do with Badfinger, and when Elektra Records saw two of Badfinger's
principal songwriters working together again, guess what the reaction was?
Never mind the fact that, by 1979, most of the public's memories of Badfinger
had been completely erased — here was at least a little something to latch on to.
It is true that Badfinger was not exclusively
Pete Ham's backing band: both Evans and Molland contributed mightily to the
original music and image, and one could theoretically imagine the two trying to
resuscitate and preserve the original spirit. That is, however, not the case
with Airwaves. First, much of it was
done with the active participation of a third creative member, guitarist and
vocalist Joe Tansin, whose songwriting and arranging techniques were seemingly
raised not on the Beatles, but rather on mid-1970's dance hits, ballads, and
MOR «classics».
Second, Molland and Evans themselves are trying
to bring their sound more in line with late-1970's «standards» of power-pop.
They completely ignore any punk/New Wave innovations of the past few years —
the backbone of ʽLook Out Californiaʼ, opening the album, is so defiantly Chuck
Berry-esque that it ain't even funny — and that may be a plus, because a
Badfinger taking lessons from Blondie or the Cars sounds like a miserable idea.
But, on the other hand, this does not prevent the current Badfinger
incarnation from taking extra lessons not only from Cheap Trick, but maybe even
from... Billy Joel? At any rate, it all sounds very much like clean-shaven, well-meaning, slick, glossy, generic
mid-1970s pop.
Worst of all, I like it. Behind all the gloss lies a bunch of well-crafted hooks,
memorable melodies and even some genuinely resonating emotional content. Joe
Tansin is responsible for the two weakest numbers — the «heavy» rockers
ʽWinnerʼ and ʽSympathyʼ, combining gruff distorted riffs with dance beats,
keyboards, and strings in a loud show of nothing in particular (although even
under these conditions, there is still some nice jerky tension in ʽSympathyʼ).
But Evans and Molland manage to stuff this new formula with plenty of fresh
meat.
Molland's ʽLove Is Gonna Come At Lastʼ was the
right choice for a single, and it even made a brief chart appearance (#69 on
the US charts wasn't so bad, considering the band's past reputation of
«commercial poison») — dominated by a fabulous slide guitar riff on top of an
old-timey jangle pattern, but with a modernistic-mainstreamish hook in the
chorus (so it sounds a little like ABBA, what's really wrong with that?). Evans' sentimental piano ballad ʽLost
Inside Your Loveʼ is even better — it's as if he took the whole «Badfinger
reincarnation» thing really seriously, and tried here to compensate for the
lack of Pete Ham by coming up with something comparable in sheer vulnerability:
his "what can I say, what can I do..." is a genuine tugger and ranks
among the band's finest moments of soulful purity, whatever that might mean.
Then, on side B, Joey contributes the excellent
ʽThe Dreamerʼ, a big lump of power chords, lush piano, and romantic strings,
and the mediocre ʽCome Down Hardʼ, an even bigger
lump of power chords that uses the mean trick of double-tracking its rhythm
guitar parts to imitate brawn and hooks; and Evans brings things to a close
with the cozy McCartney-esque piano balladry of ʽSail Awayʼ... yes, eight songs
in all, not counting the brief acoustic intro (title track), but for a
«B-quality» record like this, thirty minutes seems just all right anyway.
At the end of the day, Airwaves still is, in
some way, a Badfinger album — just as it was with the band's output in the
early 1970s, they are modifying their sound to «suit the times», but they still
never end up suiting the times because they never go all the way. Behind all
the production gloss we still see Tom Evans, the charming, idealistic small
town bumpkin, and Joey Molland, the slightly snub-nosed street punk, not having
altered their original personalities one bit. As usual, there are hits and
misses — hardly atypical for even the best Badfinger records — but the hits are
strong enough to keep the album in a modestly respectable position in the
catalog. Thumbs
up.
PS. Please keep in mind that the five bonus
tracks, even though they do a fine job of beefing up the album's length, should
be kept separate — all of them are Joe Tansin songs, with the first three
recorded by the man solo in the
mid-Eighties (the only reason they are here is that they were allegedly written, not recorded, during the Airwaves sessions). Most are power
ballads or synth-pop tunes, and ʽSend Me Your Loveʼ sounds bit-by-bit like
something off a Christine McVie solo album, if you need a guideline. Skippable.
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