Customer Reviews

In The Running

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Released in 1992, this is the fifth full-length album from Howard Jones, In the Running. Ten songs are contained. The material is in a pop musical direction. Overall, I find the songwriting to be worthy, the musicianship to be skilled, and the sound quality to be satisfying. The album sports an organic quality. Jones turns out a worthy vocal performance. Also, along with the keyboard work, the compositions contain piano playing--both instruments complement each other. Seven of the cuts provide female backing vocals, while a couple of them--the ballads "The Voices Are Back" and "One Last Try"--exhibit brass instrumentation. The album's guitar work is minimal. My favorite pieces are "Show Me," "The Voices Are Back," "Two Souls," and "City Song." "Show Me" and "The Voices Are Back" supply pleasing choruses. Pretty keyboard lines are furnished on "Two Souls," and the ballad "City Song" has a gratifying refrain. When it comes to the CD booklet, it includes the song lyrics and four black-and-white photos of Jones; in addition, the back of the CD jewel case displays a color photo of him. The disc is just over 51 minutes. In the Running gets the job done.

Howard Jones has entered the nineties in style with "In the Running." Temporing down the synths in favor of piano keys, he sounds like a mix between Bruce Hornsby and Peter Gabriel. From start to finish, this is an album I can enjoy over and over. Especially the magic of songs like "City Song," and the tenderness of "One Last Try." It's rare for an artist this last in their career to come back from the bottomless 80 s to the sensitive 90's.

My title sums up my opinion. If you already know and love this album and you have the standard, US domestic cd, you should really seek out the version made in Europe. I don't know how Elektra ruined the master but the US cd sounds like an MP3 with a heavy compression ratio when compared with the sound of the European version. (Other US WEA pop cd's from European acts from around this period were similarly poorly mastered in the US.)

However, I can't much recommend this album to anyone but the biggest HoJo fan, and maybe even not to some of them. How a man who just a few years earlier was singing about not being brought down by the "doom crew" could end up writing such a thoroughly depressing album is beyond me. Some of these sad songs are enjoyable and some are embarrassing ("The Voices Are Back" has to be one of HoJo's worst ever) but taken as a whole this album just wears on the listener.

I don't know whether HoJo lost his major label affiliation or he decided he no longer wanted to be involved in big, corporate music. Either way, this album clearly signaled the change in Howard toward targeting a smaller audience.

Most musicians who were famous in the 1980s often faced an impasse. If they stuck to the synthesized sound that they became popular with, they'd be considered out of touch & old-fashioned. If they tried to change & update themselves for the times, they'd be considered sell-outs or out of their range. Howard Jones faced that kind of problem. His biggest hits like "What Is Love" & "Things Can Only Get Better" were some of the better-conceived synth-pop hits of the decade. But he was smart enough to realize that the sound wouldn't be popular forever & did the right thing by moving on with the years. The only problem was that the public didn't want him to change & as a result, his audience is now down to a cult following, at least in the U.S. Howard's last album of any note in America was 1992's IN THE RUNNING. Despite having hits post-synthesizers like "No One Is To Blame" & "Everlasting Love", they weren't the major successes of his more upbeat computerized tunes. With IN THE RUNNING, Howard had his last top 40 hit to date with the uptempo "Lift Me Up". There are still some synths in the mix, but they aren't as intrusive & the result is one of Howard's most underrated singles ever. Elsewhere, he tries his best to use actual keyboards on songs like "Fallin' Away", "Tears To Tell" (a minor hit single that barely went anywhere) & the closing epic "City Song", which is another hats-off to Howard's biggest idol, Elton John. The results are surprisingly successful, proving that he is actually quite a good keyboard player even when he isn't plugged in. But the rest of IN THE RUNNING can best be called Howard Jones going through the motions. "Gun Turned On The World" is actually very likeable, it's just hard to grasp its meaning when you hear it the first time. "The Voices Are Back" is much hated by Howard's fans & it is quite surreal, one you'll want to read the lyrics to while you hear it. "Exodus" has Howard contributing his own brand of social commentary, but perhaps he hasn't really understood the meaning of "too preachy" just yet. "Show Me" & "One Last Try" are run-of-the-mill love songs that could have come from anyone, even 1990s Elton John. After IN THE RUNNING, Howard Jones' American appeal disappeared & even now his major fan base remains in his homeland of Europe. 1997's ANGELS & LOVERS was another excursion into acoustic keyboard territory which was later released in an "Americanized" version called PEOPLE in 1998. So while Howard may now be considered more of a cult favorite since he's affirmatively non-synthesized, that doesn't mean his music has gone bad. It's just turned away from the demands the public wants for music nowadays. But let's hope Howard keeps this new sound alive as much as possible. And if he must return to synthesized territory, let's hope it's to the level of IN THE RUNNING which, while it was not a classic in any sense of the word, showed that a former synthesizer wizard could indeed make good.

I've listened to this album, being one of - I believe - a few Dutch Howie fans, with on my mind the sound of his previous albums. I didn't expect it to match so little, but I loved it immediately! I like when he plays the piano like he did on "The Voices Are Back", sings a love song like "One Last Try" and puts a great instrumental solo in "Fallin' Away" or rocks in "Exodus". I'm looking forward to the should-be-great albums "Live Acoustic America" and "People". I don't understand why Howard wasn't so popular in Holland at his top days in the 80's. I cannot understand why I have to go on the internet to find info on him, instead of going to record-stores where they don't even know him anymore. IT'S JUST GREAT MUSIC!!!

This album from Howard Jones has some pretty good stuff on it. If you're expecting music like his debut album, don't bother with this release, because it's completely different from Human's Lib. This album is more piano-oriented than his previous albums. A lot of the material is mellow, but the music is still pretty good.

Howard Jones has a distinct sound and he maintains it here. I'm sure it was first released in an album or cassette because there are only 10 songs here. I like Howard's style of music and the lyrics are mostly inspirational and about love and relationships. I am glad that Howard Jones keeps making music like Joe Jackson and others from the 1980s who are not only memorable for their music videos but their voices and sounds still reasonate in our time. Howard's music doesn't make you want to dance as to go out and conquer the world. I think it's time that he got his British honour too.