Customer Reviews

Burning Questions

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Here and there, there are some strong songs - Release Me, Love Is A Burning Question, and Here It Comes Again especially stand out. Interesting songs throughout. Nice being re-introduced to Joe Meek. Mr. Tender is the surprise overly-sentimnetal song which might have fit better (and dramatically improved) 12HE.

GP does it again! Release Me, Love is a Burning Question and Long Stem Rose, which by the way, may be the sweetest song ever done by Graham(if a nasal whine can be described as sweet, yes it can). I'm listening to it now!

GRAHAM PARKER

REVIEW: Burning Questions

GRAHAM PARKER

Where there's a smoking discussion there must be a burning question. And this one is -- how does BQ rate in the GP oeuvre?

Burning Questions is more a sleeper than a knock down, no-holds-barred masterpiece like the first four (Howlin Wind, Stick To Me, Heat Treatment and Squeezing Out Sparks).

"Smouldering Questions" might have been a better title. There are a few sparks squeezed out but they don't really catch alight. It seems to me there's a transition going on between the band thing and the defiant simplicity of 12HE which was wholly performable solo.

The range of talent on the album is impressive. As in SBL Andrew Bodnar (Rumour), Pete Thomas (Attractions) make up the rhythm section. Mick Talbot (Style Council) plays keyboards (rather uninspiringly) with PP Arnold, an obscure but renowned (Small Faces, Roger Waters, Joan Armatrading) backing vocalist plus Eddie Manion (who played a Springsteen gig this year) on sax and a string quartet for Long Stem Rose.

Release Me's "gris gris you sprinkled in my bed is starting to make me crack" is a powerful image but "Ah my blood's still boiling, like a snake you come coiling" is, hmmm, how do you say, trite? And we really expect a bit more than "I ain't nothin but your slave of love."

Release Me might be weak lyrically but with its assured chorus hook and the sax and vocal parts and echoey drums probably is the hardest working track on the album.

Too Many Knots To Untangle is one of GP's better tracks on any album where the bitter and cynical world view is framed in an insistent love song. The ooohs are reminiscent of Big Man On Paper and the great bass runs are musically among his best. There's no doubt GP finds the world stupid and evil -- he needs to share his loneliness with someone who understands him but he doesn't want his partner to be bitter -- he needs the comfort of uncomplicated love.

In Love is a Burning Question "The only time the world makes sense to us is when we come ...I'll endlessly search for your heart with a carnal switchblade ... I've used you you're bleeding I know but don't be afraid..." I think he's saying that while love is a burning question sex is not the answer. It's just a place (oblivion?) in which hide. This song has a rather overblown sense of grandeur -- it's a tender little ditty about futility and doesn't seem capable of carrying the superstructure of the production it gets.

Despite the confusion in Platinum Blonde (as to what it's really about) this song is one of the better ones on the record. A diatribe about the Swedes or one in particular is a mite shallow as a topic but there are plenty of observations and clever comments thrown in. The country picking seems to hearken back to Howlin Wind and forward to 12HE.

Long Stem Rose has a haunting melody, not to my taste but memorable. However once again the metaphor seems stretched beyond endurance. The whole idea might have been a single line in another song. It doesn't seem to have the same personal private meaning or power as say, Strong Winds.

Short Memories is a single if there ever was one. That one probaby still rubs the status quo up the wrong way. Its second verse adds the personal to the rollicking protest anthem. Futility again with the bridge: "Sure there'll be another war."

Here It Comes Again lacks that echoing drum sound and seems to benefit from the lack of it. Just a fast rhythm guitar and scorching lyrics. A standout track. Spector-like wall of sound behind the rhythm guitar.

Mr Tender's corny melody is the most un-GP like sound I can think of. And yet the lyrics are classic recent GP. A song I can't quite cope with musically, but it's a worthy effort, like They Murdered The Clown -- using a musical genre, or sound effect, has its dangers. It can overwhelm your own melodic invention.

Just like Hermann Hesse with its key change for the chorus seems to me a tad experimental. The album is skating on thin ice here. Things only marginally improve with Yesterday's Cloud, a fun song with a pastiche of GP-isms flung together in a romp with background oy!s. At least it rocks.

Oasis is reminiscent of The Sun Is Gonna Shine Again but can't hold a candle to it, I'm afraid. (...I will try not to be your mirage...) The lyrics just don't seem to rise above the rhyming dictionary. And Worthy Of Your love ends the set in a rather desultory fashion. These songs were just waiting for the private, crystal clear arrangements of 12HE.

So Burning Questions was, like the Up Escalator, another golden GP era fizzling out. But it carried the seeds of the next phase. 12 Haunted Episodes, more personal, less commercial, is the most unified and internally consistent of GP's later career. Not to all tastes, for sure, but...

Lack of success for 12HE probably created some of the "classic" angry-young-(middle-aged)-man flavours of Acid Bubblegum, which despite its title is a rather quiet and thoughful album. Other live solo and and accompanied tours (Japan, Episodes, Figgs) rounded out this phase.

What's next? A new direction? I'm hoping it's a relaxed acceptance that here is one of the best writers alive, who uses a great medium to express himself, has a passion in his voice equalled by none -- leading inevitably to a celebration of his own creativity and his musical roots. More Motown. More power pop. More ska. More reggae. More cynical brilliance. More GP.

Robert Whyte July 1998© 1977 Robert Whyte

This review was sent the Graham Parker mailing list.

For more information on Graham Parker, visit Squeezing Out Sparks (unofficial Graham Parker Home Page).

 

This was Graham's '92. After an attempt with a top 40 hit, the persuasive, "Wake Up", he offered this CD of love questioned, determined, lost, and lifted up. Melancoly and mesmezering, this is a fine marriage of anger apoligese and angst.

When Graham was on tour for this CD, he refused to sing any songs from prior LPS/CDs. This seemed to liberate him and he sang the sings on this CD with more passion than I had seen him sing before. He stood at the lip of the stage and touched hands, seemed more comfortable than ever. No one seemed to mind that he didn't sing any hits.

Later. backstage, he asked how it went. We all said WOW! and ...he smiled stood tall walked off proud I hope.

But, Graham didn't get another hit, was dropped by Mercury, signed by Razor and Tie, continued to make good CDS.

The Hall of Fame waits...

This 1992 release is not one of Parker's better efforts. It lacks the biting anger you might normally expect from him. The one exception is the Richie Haven's sounding "Here It Comes Again", with some excellent lyrics about our privacy being invaded which would be a timely release today with the Patriot Act and all. Another strong song is "Love Is A Burning Question" which sounds like classic Graham Parker. But there's not much else here to hold onto.

I would give this five stars if Short Memories and Here It Comes Again were replaced by two other songs,not even great songs,anything. I played those songs first time through and have never listened to them again; how can an English guy take on a song which is a country finger-picking lament about war (Short Memories) and isn`t it too late in the day to resurrect the Street Fighting Man/Sympathy For the Devils Stones riff (Here It Comes Again)? Apart from those this is sublime music; two gorgeous ballads both of which scream for lucrative Celine Dion covers; Long Stem Rose and Oasis and touch on Lennon,James taylor,Joni Mitchell and Elvis Costello/Smithereens at their best. Too many Knots To Untangle jingle-jangles along like a New Wave reading of sixties pop. Mr Tender doo-wops along with a lovely middle eight when you thought it couldn`t better and like a good many Parker songs the melody is so simple you wonder why nodbody thought of it before. Instant classic. Joe Meek`s Blues is like Dylan if Dylan could sing,had tunes and genuinely wrote from the heart..it`s Dylan with soul (and an ELO fadeout); Yesterday`s Cloud and Just Like Herman Hesse are all in Parker`s own unique style which amongst all the other touich-points in all his albums continues the tradition of a coupla tracks you can not define, but here goes; Johnny Cash sings about a German novelist who influenced the hippies (Just Like Herman Hesse) and the Rolling Stones sing the theme tune to a science fiction movie with a Spencer Davies group- meets- Stax-Volt chorus. You gotta listen to this album. This burns softly and coolly with great production; one of his best.