Rules are made to be broken. Especially when they're my rules, and this is my journal. So, when I began this one I made it a strict criterion that I would only listen to albums I had never heard before here. Now, with the Tom Waits discography going on in my main journal, and not wanting to interrupt that, I find this is a good place to drop in short reviews also of albums I do know. So that's what I'll be doing from now on: a mixture of old and new, current and classic, and anything in between. With that in mind...
Any direction of the compass you look, it's solid gold!
Artiste: Gerry Rafferty
Nationality: British
Album: North and south
Year: 1988
Label: London
Genre: Rock
Tracks:
North and south
Moonlight and gold
Hearts run dry
Tired of talking
A dangerous age
Shipyard town
Winter’s come
Nothing ever happens down here
On a night like this
Unselfish love
Chronological position: Sixth album
Familiarity: Night owl Snakes and ladders, Sleepwalking
Interesting factoid:
Initial impression: n/a
Best track(s): North and south, Shipyard town, Tired of talking, Winter’s come, Hearts run dry, Moonlight and gold, A dangerous age
Worst track(s): Nothing ever happens down here, Unselfish love
Comments: One of my very favourite Gerry Rafferty albums, it’s one of those that keeps giving up until about the last three tracks, when it dips slightly and ends badly, but what goes beforehand is enough to solidify its status among his albums for me. It kicks off with the title track, a real celtic atmosphere built already thanks to the uilleann pipes of Davy Spillane and soon becomes a boppy mid-tempo track as Gerry recalls
”I was born a poor man’s son following tradition/ When I came of age I hit the road/ And followed blind ambition” while horns and fiddles paint a background to a great opener. Really gets you in the mood. It’s followed by
Moonlight and gold, a semi-ballad with some really nice keyboard and percussion, Knopfleresque guitar too, though he’s not on the album.
Tired of talking kicks up the tempo with the help of fine whistles from Spillane and a thumping beat, while thick brass backs up
Hearts run dry, one of the true ballads on the album, super little guitar solo too, then there’s a beautiful runup to one of the other standouts,
A dangerous age, which has everything in it you ever need to realise that Gerry was rock and not pop as some people who have only ever heard a certain song about a certain street would have you believe. What a lovely line:
”We stood on the motorway shoulder/ The moon rose over the rolling hills/ And my heart broke down/ When I looked at you.” The connection to being broken down in a layby and the failure of a relationship is just so well observed. Wonderful sax outro just completes this amazing song.
And it keeps getting better. For now. A look back to youth and high hopes,
Shipyard town was the single from this album, and deserved to be, even though there are deeper, better songs on it (almost the whole album if I’m honest). It kicks off with the same uilleann pipes intro that started the album, then jumps into a rockin’, uptempo song driven on striding sax and jangly guitar. Despite its upbeat tone, the song actually deals with the ending of a relationship, rather like the previous one. And the one before that. And the one before that.
You know, it's something I never really realised before, but now that I listen back to this album I don't think the title has to do with geographical locations at all. I think "North and south" may refer to woman and man, or even north representing the beginning of the relationship when everything is fine, the romantic side of it, and then south (when it, literally, goes south) the ending of it. Interesting. I never thought of it that way before. May not be the case, but still, something to think about.
Winter’s come fades in on what sounds like pan pipes but is surely synth-created, with an ambient, atmospheric rendition of the intro just used on
Shipyard town and becomes the second ballad, with quite a tinge of Country in it, accordion and fiddle adding to it. After this though is where the album begins to nosedive. The pure fifties rock-and-roll of
Nothing ever happens down here is okay but very much inferior to all the tracks that have gone before, and it comes as something of a shock, the album having been so perfect up to this point. There’s a slight recovery with the beautiful classical piano introduction to
On a night like this, but it quickly becomes an accordion-driven but fairly nondescript semi-ballad, and the album ends on the reggae-infused
Unselfish love. Quite a disappointment.
Overall impression: I loved this album right up to
Nothing ever happens down here, and was quite annoyed at the fact it never really recovered from there, but that apart I love this album to death, one of my favourite Rafferty recordings.
Hum Factor: 9
Surprise Factor: n/a
Intention: There are still some of Gerry’s albums I need to listen to, especially his more recent ones. A sad loss to music.