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"SCROLL DOWN , READ, Then BUY
the album"
WORKS IN PROGRESS
One degree under from 21st-century ills? Don’t waste
a second – for speedy recovery take delivery of the new Neil Innes album,
tunes
for today’s audience with yesterday’s
belief in humanity. It’s all here, as good as ever and badly needed now:
catchy melodies and
crafty arrangements, wry humour and cunning puns, the pervading hope that
man will come clean and greed will stand trial. It
needs to be said, and sung, and how. Heartily recommended.
Mark Lewisohn
Sometimes you have to lower your expectations when one of your favorite and enduring artists releases a new album in the 21st century.
Will his songs be rehashes or remakes of old material?
Will the digital quality expose the frayed edges of your former warm, vinyl
pal like age spots in a fluorescent light? Will his voice or instrument playing
be reduced to retirement-home-entertainment-night quality?
Has he kept up with the times or is he living in the past?
In the case of Neil Innes' first all-new studio solo album since the '80s, there are no foundations for any of these worries.
"Works In Progress" bring Neil Innes fully up-to-date
in a flawlessly arranged, performed and produced album - without losing any
of the uniquely charming-to-sentimental-to-shocking qualities of songwriting
that Neil Innes has been known for since the '60s.
Without harking back musically even once to Bonzos or Python or Rutles, "Works In Progress" fast-forwards to 2005, with exciting instrumentation from a bevy of musicians with doses of Anglo, Latin, American and even Eastern Europe styles, embellishing ten immensely entertaining songs from the master of charming parody and crystal clear reflection.
Driven by a celtic woodwind/acoustic
atmosphere the opening cut, "One Of These People,"
is a biting look at striving for a happy existence amidst the doomsayers of
modern times.
When CCR's John Fogerty returned from a long hiatus in 2004, one of his new songs mentioned kids "listenin' to the rock star on a CD," exposing, perhaps, his ignorance of today's younguns enjoying rappers on iPods. Neil, however, is quite tuned in to today's tech society in "Face Mail In The Meat Zone."
"Eye Candy" puts you inside a bad mass media dream, drawing its storyline from the ever-vaster wasteland on the other end of your cable or satellite TV remote.
The bittersweet-sounding "Never Alone" contains a wonderfully-Innesesque punch line which enforces the lonely-at-the-top - from the bottom.
A rockabilly-like shuffle accompanies "Hero Of The
Motorway," a lonely road song which puts you behind the steering wheel
on a
trip to the sky.
Proving Neil won't be boxed into the middle-aged family-friendly
mode, "Charlie Big Potatoes" is as raw and uncomfortable as the
Phil Robinson book that inspired it. This is the one cut you'll want to program
past if you're listening to the "Works In Progress"
with the kids.
The album's straightest ballad, "All Alone,"
leads into "Stealing Time," a truthful look at aging, followed by
"Evening Sun," an
oddly refracted impression of the late-afternoon commute as only Neil could
help us observe it.
"Friends In The End," a tip of the glass to those
who've slipped the bonds of Earth, subtley points out that grieving involves
a bit of selfishness. It's a fitting closing track to an album that's a freshly
squeegeed window into Neil Innes' fabulously funny and complex
mind - a work in progress, thankfully.
Archer
"The Mountain Morning Show" & "Breakfast With The Beatles,"
KQMT/Denver-Boulder
