Shouldn't it be a cinch to produce a consistently breathtaking Neville Brothers album? Wouldn't one have only to hand Aaron Neville a collection of worthy material, instruct the band's instrumentalists to keep a low profile, and roll the tape?
one track; Malcolm Burn and the Brothers did most of the others) could hardly have gone wrong giving the tune the same treatment that Daniel Lanois brought to Bob Dylan's "With God on Our Side" on the Brothers' 1989 album,
Yellow Moon, allowing Aaron to sing virtually unaccompanied. Instead, Stewart gilds the lily to within an inch of its life, swamping the track with percussion and disco-pop ornamentation.
The Brothers' predilection for Major Statements is getting entirely out of hand; witness Art's utterly baffling spoken polemic "Sons and Daughters." Here the senior Neville aptly notes that "slogans mean nothing to a young man facing 352 years' hard labor ... for a crime he did not commit," with one breath, only to sloganize, "It's freedom of speech as long as you don't say too much," with his next!
In fairness, when guitarists Leo Nocentelli and Eric Struthers and guest "squaller" Marva Wright take over the song's coda, the results are positively spine tingling, as is the Brothers' resuscitation of the early Elvis track "Mystery Train." Art Neville sounds like a less polished Brook Benton to wonderful effect in the shimmering "Fallin' Rain" – behold the beauty of his downward slurs! And in a better world, both the joyous, harmony-laden "Steer Me Right" and "Fearless," whose chorus reunites the Grammy-winning tandem of Aaron and Linda Ronstadt, would be inexorable Top Forty hits.
No right-thinking American can help but root for the Nevilles in view of what they've been through and how long they've been through it. But sympathy aside, Brother's Keeper is an undeniable letdown. (RS 586)
JOHN MENDELSSOHN
