BLOOD, SWEAT & TEARS: MORE THAN EVER (1976)
1) They; 2) I Love You More
Than Ever; 3) Katy Bell; 4) Sweet Sadie The Savior; 5) Hollywood; 6) You're The
One; 7) Heavy Blue; 8) Saved By The Grace Of Your Love.
Curious, yes, but as late as late 1976, the
band was somehow still holding up. As rhythm & blues, black and white
alike, was steering ever closer to sterilized disco standards, and men were coming
to terms with beginning to sound like machines rather than human beings, there
are practically no signs of catastrophe on More Than Ever — yes, at the expense of sounding way too
old-fashioned, Blood, Sweat & Tears make an album here whose reputation a
couple of decades or so past its
original release must have inevitably exceeded the «warmth» of the initial
reception (when the record stalled at #165, and was used as an excuse by
Columbia to drop the band from its roster — not that the label itself didn't
have a hand in this failure).
Anyway, more than anything else, More Than Ever takes its cue from the
peak years of Stevie Wonder — with plenty of funky clavinet, brass fanfares à la ʽSuperstitionʼ, «ominous», socially
acute, R&B, and excursions into gospel soul territory. Almost half of the
album is self-penned, and the other half is allocated for relatively obscure
covers, sometimes provided by guest players (e. g. ʽSweet Sadie The Saviorʼ,
credited to Patti Austin, who took part in the sessions as backup vocalist).
There is very little here that could be even remotely called «daring» or
«experimental», but the songs are written and recorded with care, and, most
importantly, with enough obvious love for the purely musical side of the
business.
Occasionally, there are tasteless missteps.
ʽHollywoodʼ, a glitzy dance-funk number that, out of everything on here, moves
the closest to disco, was probably intended as a tongue-in-cheek self-parody —
the band sending up their own image of «prisoners of Las Vegas / Beverly Hills»
— but it is not funny enough to be perceived as a purely comic number, and so,
the ecstatic chants of "Hollywood! Hollywood! I think we're gonna be here
a while!.." can easily come across as silly pandering rather than
self-irony.
The big, bulky, gospelish ballads are also a problem.
ʽI Love You More Than Everʼ, despite not being written by any of the band
members, is entitled way too similar
to ʽI Love You More Than You'll Ever Knowʼ to suggest sheer coincidence — and
invokes unfavorable comparisons, since this
here song is just a sentimental, hyper-orchestrated love ballad. The oboe part
from guest star Sid Weinberg is a useful bit of peaceful pastoralism to draw
attention away from the corny string arrangements, but it is still not enough
to push the song into «artsy baroque» territory. In the end, it's just another
sappy love hymn, suffering from excessive weight. ʽSaved By The Grace Of Your
Loveʼ, closing out the album, suffers from the same, and this time, it does not
even have any oboes for partial redemption. But at least they both give it an
honest try.
A little more adequacy seems to be present in
the tougher numbers. ʽTheyʼ is a funk / fusion vehicle that seems to grumble
against organized religion, but, most importantly, has several instrumental
passages that dispense with predictability — guitars, brass, vibraphones, and
the rhythm section move around in semi-free-form mode, groping for ideas, and
generate a few minutes of thoroughly anti-commercial controlled chaos à la Zappa, which, furthermore, fits
very well the overall confused / angry mood of the song. The funky instrumental
ʽHeavy Blueʼ, in comparison, never tries to move into previously uncharted
territory, but it does establish a moderately cool proto-disco groove —
delightfully integrating all of the band's varied instrumentation to capture
the now-dated, but then-resonant stylishness of the decade without sacrificing
the musician.
The rest of the songs do not deserve much
commentary, but, as usual, none of them are awful — in fact, beyond the unlucky
corniness of ʽHollywoodʼ, there is nothing on More Than Ever that would significantly challenge good taste:
«generic decent album» would be closer to the truth than «generic failure». Why
they decided to release ʽYou're The Oneʼ, one of the better ballads from the
set, as the lead single instead of the much more hard-hitting ʽTheyʼ is
anybody's guess — probably deemed ʽTheyʼ too adventurous for the masses, or
hoped for yet another ʽYou've Made Me So Very Happyʼ — but on the whole, of
course, their stubborn clinging to the old style was commercially doomed from
the start. However, that is no reason to dismiss the record today without giving it a chance: it
remains perfectly listenable, and deserves an unethusiastic, but honest thumbs up.
Check "More Than Ever" (CD) on Amazon
No comments:
Post a Comment