{"id":25520,"date":"2023-06-23T05:30:14","date_gmt":"2023-06-23T09:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=25520"},"modified":"2023-06-23T18:20:04","modified_gmt":"2023-06-23T22:20:04","slug":"album-review-jody-porter-and-the-berlin-waltz-waterways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2023\/06\/23\/album-review-jody-porter-and-the-berlin-waltz-waterways\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Jody Porter and the Berlin Waltz \u2013 Waterways"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Fountains of Wayne made some of the best melodic pop\/rock of their time. The group was active from the mid 1990s through about 2013. They had gone inactive in 2011, and the 2020 death of Adam Schlesinger ruled out any further group activity.<\/p>\n

All along, FoW had effectively been a vehicle for the songwriting talents of Schlesinger and Chirs Collingwood. While the band\u2019s lineup remained unchanged from 1997 onward, drummer Brian Young and guitarist Jody Porter never placed any of their songs on the group’s releases. Heck, you were ore likely to get a song on a Fountains of Wayne album if your name was Burt Bacharach, Jeff Lynne or Justin Hayward.)<\/p>\n

But as his 2010 solo debut Close to the Sun<\/i><\/a> made plain, Porter is a talented songwriter and vocalist (we already knew about his fine guitar work). And while his second solo album, 2013\u2019s Month of Mondays<\/i> and 2017\u2019s Pacifier<\/i> both somehow slipped by without my notice, I\u2019m pleased to hear Waterways<\/i>, his fourth release.<\/p>\n

Porter\u2019s melodic instincts are the equal of his better-known former band mates. His rocking quotient, though, is a few notches higher. \u201cGirl from the Other Side\u201d is a rifftastic tune, with a signature lick that will drill its way into the listener\u2019s head, remaining there. \u201cHalf Mast\u201d combines hookiness and shoegaze texture, two qualities that don\u2019t coexist nearly often enough.<\/p>\n

The soaring, scintillating guitar lines on \u201cMoonbeam Reach\u201d make the most of creative sustain. The chiming \u201cArgonaut\u201d is the track on which Porter sounds the most like his old band. The pure pop (yet always rocking) character that he brought to late-period Monkees projects is in full flower here; his Rickenbacker tones and subtle handclaps adorn a breezy tune. If there\u2019s any criticism of the tune – -and it\u2019s a mild one \u2013 it\u2019s that Porter\u2019s vocals are bit buried in the mix.<\/p>\n

The gauzy, loping \u201cCrashland\u201d will draw the listener deep into Porter\u2019s musical world. His subtle use of keyboard textures is so understated that it\u2019s easy to miss; throughout the album he demonstrates a keen sense of arrangement aesthetics.<\/p>\n

While his approach to vocals doesn\u2019t vary widely throughout Waterways, Porter\u2019s guitar tone and arrangement choices are quite wide-screen. The glammy \u201cSheet Lightning\u201d makes the most of snaky guitar lines and Brian Young\u2019s splashy drum work.<\/p>\n

Druign the Fountains of Wayne years, Schlesinger and Collingwood were often singled out for their clever wordplay;, their intelligent use of language. Whether Porter started out with similar skills or picked up some inspiration from them is less important than the fact that he demonstrates similar expertise in that area. From its title on down, \u201cNeverlasting Love\u201d is a prime example of that. \u201cSyncing Ships\u201d is a pretty clever title, too, and its eerie keyboards \u2013 coupled with the \u201cTomorrow Never Knows\u201d style drumming \u2013 rank among the most compelling moments on the album.<\/p>\n

Porter\u2019s facility on multiple instruments means that he likely could have created Waterways completely on his own. And while he does much of the heavy lifting on this new set \u2013 all the guitars and keyboards, most of the bass, co-production), he\u2019s joined by some serious players. Former band mate Young (who produced the album with Porter) plays drums on most of the tracks, and bassist-vocalist Ian Harrod (with whom I\u2019ve had the occasional pleasure to play) helps out a bit.<\/p>\n

The albums ends with the brief but tasty \u201cWaterways (Pt 2).\u201d The tune fades early, and after a suitable period of silence, a hidden bonus track appears (hey, I remember the \u201890s, too). Layers upon layers of squalling guitars inhabit a rocked-up, swirlingly psychedelic and essentially instrumental number that would likely be a highlight of a Jody Porter live set. That\u2019s something I\u2019d like to witness. In the meantime, Waterways<\/i> is the next best thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fountains of Wayne made some of the best melodic pop\/rock of their time. The group was active from the mid 1990s through about 2013. They had gone inactive in 2011, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25521,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,62,65],"tags":[852,1159],"class_list":["post-25520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-release","category-rawk","category-review","tag-fountains-of-wayne","tag-jody-porter","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25520"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25523,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25520\/revisions\/25523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}