BoDeans
Outside Looking In
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It's a sad and oft-repeated story. A spunky regional band signs with a major label, records an album true to its roots and subsequently makes slicker, less convincing records in the quest for platinum. In the case of this Waukesha, Wisconsin, quartet, such a misstep is particularly distressing. The band's 1986 debut, Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams, produced by T-Bone Burnett, featured hopelessly cornball love songs, a scruffy mix of acoustic and electric guitars and the Midwestern-Don-and-Phil harmonies of lead singers and songwriters Beau BoDean (Kurt Newmann) and Sammy BoDean (Sammy Llanas). There wasn't an original idea to be found on the whole album, but that didn't detract from its
Read More charm or sincerity. One year and a Time magazine feature later, the BoDeans – drummer Guy BoDean (né Hoffman) has since departed, reducing the band to a trio – are back, this time produced by Talking Heads' Jerry Harrison. Immediately it's apparent that something's wrong: "Dreams," the sluggish opening track, is bogged down with a bland arrangement and overly echoey vocals. Whereas Burnett emphasized the group's camaraderie, Harrison replaces the band's south-of-the-Canadian-border spark with a generic "American rock" sound complete with tinkling keyboards, session musicians and incongruous backup singers. What made the lovesick sentiments of the first album so disarming was the no-frills production; here, when the pipsqueaky Sammy emotes that he's "looking for something that I ain't known" in "What It Feels Like," he has to fight against formulaic power chords and a cannonlike drum sound. Harrison's work aside, there's an equally troubling aspect to Outside Looking In. Sammy and Beau continue their chronicles of unrequited love and blown opportunities, but their new songs – "Dreams," "Pick Up the Pieces," "Someday," "Only Love" – are as uninspired as their titles. Now and then, the record reaches out and grabs you in the manner of the first album's wife-beating tale, "She's a Runaway": the quietly intense harmonizing of "Pick Up the Pieces," the loping, good-natured "Someday," the billowy, wind-in-your-hair chorus of "Forever Young (The Wild Ones)," which finally justifies Harrison's muscular, impersonal approach. But even these moments aren't distinctive – they're merely the sound of a well-meaning but unspectacular pop band coming up with a few hummable hooks. And considering the charm of their debut, it's hard to believe that's all the BoDeans have to offer. (RS 513) DAVID BROWNE |
