Joe Jackson - Nigh CDs • Vinyl Records • LPs • Music Albums

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Through its sequencing, Night and Day makes a tentative spiritual journey away from a sordid futuristic cityscape toward a softer, romantic sphere that is never quite reached. In "Another World" and "China Town," Jackson stumbles through the smog trying to locate the future. When he does, the boob tube has become Big Brother ("TV Age") and the city streets, human shooting galleries ("Target"). It is here, the cheerful popsalsa jingle "Cancer" assures us, that "everything gives you cancer."

Night and Day is held together by four songs in which Jackson personalizes his vision of social decay. Tinted with electropop, "Steppin' Out" portrays a couple's romantic venturing into the night as a brave act of innocence. In "Breaking Us in Two," which echoes Steely Dan's "Rikki Don't Lose That Number," Jackson debates with anguished uncertainty the boredom of monogamy versus the loneliness of independence. The album's loveliest song, "Real Men," solemnly blends string chamber music with echoes of Phil Spector, as Jackson sorts out the contradiction between the traditional male role of warrior and today's macho gay culture, finding both to be not only misogynous but antihuman: "Kill all the blacks/Kill all the reds/And if there's a war between the sexes, then there'll be no people left." Finally, in "A Slow Song," Jackson argues against the macho tyranny of overamped dance-rock: "Am I the only one/To want a strong and silent sound/To pick me up and undress me/To lay me down and caress me?"

Joe Jackson's last album, the Louis Jordan tribute, Jumpin' Jive, revealed him to be a nostalgist underneath his trendy facade. Night and Day (note the Cole Porter title) spells out the same yearnings in much clearer and more personal and compelling terms. (RS 376)

STEPHEN HOLDEN

A divorce and subsequent move to New York City resulted in the biggest seller of Joe Jackson's career. His piano comes to the forefront, the New Wave guitars of old get replaced with Latin percussion, and the synthy "Steppin' Out" was one of 1982's biggest hits. Along with Roxy Music's Avalon, this kick-started the Adult Alternative genre.