Southside Johnny & LaBamba’s Big Band’s Grapefruit Moon (The Songs of Tom Waits)
Now it’s Southside Johnny Lyons’ turn, and with Grapefruit Moon,
the Asbury Park veteran takes a completely different tack on the Waits
songbook. Backed by LaBamba’s Big Band, fronted by his New Jersey pal Richie
“LaBamba” Rosenburg, Lyons has reinvented these Waits songs as grand jazzbo
antiques with big band arrangements and lots of horns up front in the mix.
Channeling both Duke Ellington and Woody Herman, Lyons’ gruff, slightly-worn
voice sounds good on both the slow-crooned ballads and the album’s
rambunctious up-tempo flare-ups, while the band’s overall excellent
performance is integral to the success of the material. LaBamba runs a damn
tight ship, and these boys are playing their hearts out … sounding uncannily
like a white-suited-and-gloved throwback to a kinder, gentler era.
It’s
the songs that matter, though, and Grapefruit Moon doesn’t duplicate
any tunes from Johansson’s casual gaze through the Waits canon. Lyons digs a
little deeper, reaching as far back as Waits’ 1973 debut album. The result is
an interesting and eclectic choice of songs. “All the Time In the World”
offers a forceful vocal performance, more closely resembling Lyons’ typical
R&B stomp, while the band delivers a very cool and slightly atonal
‘60s-styled movie soundtrack sound that is complimented by Glenn Alexander’s
ripping guitar solo.
“Tango ‘Til They’re Sore” comes the closest
to mimicking Waits’ original version, with guttural vocals and discordant
instrumentation, and the songwriter himself drops by for a duet on the lively
“Walk Away And Start Over Again.” The two singers’ personal styles might be
wildly different, but here they mesh together nicely, with sparse
instrumentation, led by manic piano, supporting the song’s odd meter and
syncopated rhythms. And so it goes, Lyons knocking each one out of the park,
even oddball pitches like “New Coat of Paint.”
As a concept album,
Grapefruit Moon works on several levels. Waits wrote solid songs;
Southside Johnny wraps his voice around the material like a worn, slightly
scratchy velvet blanket, and LaBamba and the boys carry the heavy instrumental
load. For everybody involved, it’s win-win situation! (Evangeline Records,
2008)
Review originally published by Blurt magazine
Also on That Devil Music:
Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes’ The Fever
Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes’ Live In Cleveland ’77
Buy the CD from Amazon:
Southside Johnny’s Grapefruit Moon
