CAROLE KING: CITY STREETS (1989)
1) City Streets; 2) Sweet
Life; 3) Down To The Darkness; 4) Lovelight; 5) I Can't Stop Thinking About
You; 6) Legacy; 7) Ain't That The Way; 8) Midnight Flyer; 9) Homeless Heart;
10) Someone Who Believes In You.
A six-year break from a hitherto diligent
recording career meant that, by the grace of God above and lenience of Devil
below, we have been deprived of that one «1986 Carole King album», with guest appearances by Rod Stewart and Jon Bon
Jovi, six songs co-written with Desmond Child and Diane Warren, and produced by
Phil Collins, that could have been the final agonizing scream of her
reputation. Instead, she preferred to go for a (barely noticeable) acting
career for a while, and remain in seclusion until her muse came rapping at the
door.
And so, in the place of a hideously awful
synth-pop album from 1986, we get a pleasantly boring adult contemporary album in
1989. Co-produced by Carole herself and a little-known guitarist called Rudy
Guess (who would later support Carole on some of her tours and passed away in
2010), City Streets is... well,
probably what you'd expect a 1989 Carole King album to be: a cozy collection of
glossy, overproduced rhythm-heavy ballads, with synthesizers and electronic
drums a-plenty, a solid amount of cavernous echo to give the artist the edge
over the listener, and the actual music serving as little more than backing
track for the vocal melody. Despite, that is, the plethora of good musicians on
the record, including an unduly wasted Max Weinberg on drums, two lead guitar
contributions from Eric Clapton (who, frankly speaking, was not in his best
shape at the time either), and sax solos from Branford Marsalis and Michael
Brecker... not that I'm a big fan of either... well, you are probably beginning
to see where this is all heading.
The old charisma is still in place: Carole's
voice, with all of its technical flaws, is compensated by being incapable of
getting weaker with age, so whether she is singing songs about new love, old
love, lost love, found love, or social injustice, she always gets her point
across. The problem is that her songwriting techniques have not budged, and she
has shown no interest in trying to approach the new technologies creatively —
she simply takes these synthesizers and compressed guitars and electronically
enhanced drums at face value, as humanity's new default means of making the
same old music, and none of her musicians seem interested in directing her
towards new shores. So it all just sounds like bland adult contemporary,
slightly sweetened by the sound of her ever-lovely voice, but not by any
genuine musical hooks.
It's too bad, because there are some
potentially strong artistic statements here — I have no idea if ʽLegacyʼ is a
farewell ode to Ronald Reagan (both the lyrics and the year 1989 make this a
very realistic guess), but she manages to wrestle an unusually high level of
intensity out of her voice for the performance, almost bordering on punkish
anger, and I'd think the song deserved much more than just a wimpy accompanying
acoustic rhythm track and a lax electronic piano solo. The title track, with
Clapton on lead guitar, could also have been handled much better: the chorus
("oh city streets, the stories that they tell...") is a touching show
of amazement and compassion, but those synthesizers, and even that mid-to-late
Eighties tone of Clapton's poor Blackie, as if somebody stuffed the two of
them in a sewer pipe... oh, don't get me started.
Overall, if this kind of production does not
bother you too much, I'd say that City
Streets is worth investigating — if anything, Carole does sound a bit
refreshed, and altogether this is much better than either of the albums that
bookmark it from both sides of the chronostream. But if you were expecting a
comeback along the lines of Paul McCartney or even the Stones (yes, Steel
Wheels at least made some musical sense back in 1989), then no, this is not
this kind of comeback — not that it was even vaguely possible, considering
that Carole's songwriting gift had been sorely depleted already by the mid-Seventies,
and also considering her almost total dependence on mainstream production
standards. Still, at least the years have not taken any toll on her natural
charm, and maybe that's the best thing of all.
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