{"id":8789,"date":"2015-11-05T05:30:41","date_gmt":"2015-11-05T10:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=8789"},"modified":"2015-11-04T17:30:55","modified_gmt":"2015-11-04T17:30:55","slug":"album-reviews-three-reissues-from-peter-frampton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2015\/11\/05\/album-reviews-three-reissues-from-peter-frampton\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Reviews: Three Reissues from Peter Frampton"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 2015, Omnivore Recordings has reissued three albums from <strong>Peter Frampton<\/strong>. They&#8217;re each quite different from one another, but since they&#8217;ve been put into the market at once, that&#8217;s how I&#8217;ll review them here. &#8212; bk<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-9588\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/frampton_premonition.jpg\" alt=\"frampton_premonition\" width=\"280\" height=\"280\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/frampton_premonition.jpg 280w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/frampton_premonition-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/frampton_premonition-65x65.jpg 65w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 280px) 100vw, 280px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Premonition<\/strong><\/em> (1986)<br \/>\nThough nearly a decade had passed since releasing the blockbuster live album <em>Frampton Comes Alive<\/em>, Peter Frampton&#8217;s ability to write a solid, hooky tune had diminished little if at all. And his guitar playing was as expressive and impressive as ever. What had changed, however, was fashion. In the same way that <strong>David Bowie<\/strong> made a left-turn into the mega-selling but artistically barren <em>Let&#8217;s Dance<\/em> (1983), Frampton made concessions to the prevailing sounds of the mid 1980s.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"float: left; padding: 10px; width: 120px; height: 240px;\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ss&amp;ref=ss_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=musoscribe-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=B010XNKYG8&amp;asins=B010XNKYG8&amp;linkId=J2QSZFZQUFIWOSQK&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>And if you&#8217;ve read most anything on this blog before, you&#8217;ll know that \u2013 from my perspective \u2013 that&#8217;s rarely a good thing. Peter Frampton&#8217;s 1985 <em>Premonition<\/em> is, then, that curious creature: good songs rendered horribly dated by the album&#8217;s prevalence of digital synthesizers, stiff percussion that feels (and probably is) ruled by the infernal click track. As the guitarist relates in the Omnivore reissue&#8217;s liner note essay, \u201cI was listening a little too much to outside influences telling me what I should be doing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If you can listen past the MTV-era production values, if you can tune out the gunshot snare drums, if you can ignore the dialed-in synthesizer textures that sound impossibly clich\u00e9 in 2015, if you can forgive arrangements and instrumentation that scrub away character and render this talented artist nearly faceless \u2013 or if you actually enjoy all that shit \u2013 there&#8217;s some fine music to be found within <em>Premonition<\/em>. Otherwise, not so much.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-9587\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/frampton_pieces.jpg\" alt=\"frampton_pieces\" width=\"280\" height=\"280\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/frampton_pieces.jpg 280w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/frampton_pieces-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/frampton_pieces-65x65.jpg 65w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 280px) 100vw, 280px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>When All the Pieces Fit<\/strong><\/em> (1989)<br \/>\nThree years after <em>Premonition<\/em> and now recording for a new label, Frampton released this disc. The Omnivore liner notes (again by <strong>Scott Schinder<\/strong>) paint the disc as a return to form, arguing that Frampton had cast off the dated production non-aesthetics of that earlier disc. But the sonic realities \u2013 at least to these ears \u2013 don&#8217;t fully bear out that assertion. \u201cMore Ways Than One\u201d is a solid tune, but it sounds more than anything else like <em>Arc of a Diver<\/em>-era <strong>Steve Winwood<\/strong>. That characteristic is borne out when one learns that among Frampton&#8217;s collaborators were \u201csong doctors\u201d <strong>Danny Wilde<\/strong> and <strong>Will Jennings<\/strong> (the latter was heavily involved in 1980&#8217;s <em>Arc of a Diver<\/em>).<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"float: left; padding: 10px; width: 120px; height: 240px;\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ss&amp;ref=ss_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=musoscribe-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=B010XNKYRC&amp;asins=B010XNKYRC&amp;linkId=TNPJHNJH5VIYS4HN&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>True, Frampton&#8217;s guitar playing is much more prominent in the mix, but the era&#8217;s \u201cbig guitar\u201d sound is all over the record. Luckily, said big guitars aren&#8217;t as annoying as gunshot snares, but they&#8217;re dated all the same. And oh my, are those synth patches way past their sell-by date. Again, the songs are good, and Frampton&#8217;s playing and singing are reliably solid. <em>When All the Pieces Fit<\/em> is a vast improvement over <em>Premonition<\/em>, but it&#8217;s short of classic Frampton. But when Frampton sings \u201cAll the music that I haven&#8217;t made \/ keeps my soul alive,\u201d you figure there&#8217;s hope.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-8937\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/frampton_now.jpg\" alt=\"frampton_now\" width=\"280\" height=\"280\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/frampton_now.jpg 280w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/frampton_now-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/frampton_now-65x65.jpg 65w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 280px) 100vw, 280px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Now<\/strong><\/em> (2003)<br \/>\nDepicted on the album cover seated and shorn of his trademark curly locks, Frampton&#8217;s clearly gone through some changes since <em>When All the Pieces Fit<\/em> was released fourteen years earlier. Frampton had released but one album in the interim, a self-titled 1994 disc that is not part of Omnivore Recordings&#8217; 2015 reissue program. 1994&#8217;s <em>Peter Frampton<\/em> was released on Sony International, and by the time of <em>Now<\/em> (Frampton&#8217;s twelfth studio album), the guitarist was recording for small indie label 33<sup>rd<\/sup> Street Records. There&#8217;s an immediacy, an intimacy to the tracks on <em>Now<\/em> that will erase any bad taste those earlier albums may have left with listeners. Keyboards are indeed present, but they&#8217;re dialed way back, placed in a context more befitting an album by a guitar player. And as often as not, those keyboards are piano, electric piano, and organ; synths are most assuredly not a defining feature of <em>Now<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"float: left; padding: 10px; width: 120px; height: 240px;\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ss&amp;ref=ss_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=musoscribe-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=B010Q3UZOG&amp;asins=B010Q3UZOG&amp;linkId=5DOXNKBATT2YJ5ND&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>Frampton Comes Alive<\/em> sideman <strong>Bob Mayo<\/strong> makes a welcome return after a long absence, and helps Frampton make an unassuming record that feels \u2013 dare I say it \u2013 timeless. Some chorused guitar parts crop up in the bluesy \u201cFlying Without Wings,\u201d but they&#8217;re used to good effect. There are a lot of understated, acoustic bits on the album, and they all work. Everything about <em>Now<\/em> feels genuine and organic; perhaps not being expected to create a blockbuster gave Frampton the freedom to make an album that reflected his artistic impulses. The atmospheric instrumental \u201cGreens\u201d is a disc highlight. The snaky \u201cI&#8217;m Back\u201d delivers on its title.<\/p>\n<p>And the guitar heroics on his reading of <strong>George Harrison<\/strong>&#8216;s \u201cWhile My Guitar Gently Weeps\u201d rival the kind of thing one gets from <strong>Jeff Beck<\/strong> on his better days. Yes, the arrangement overall is nearly a replication of <strong>The Beatles<\/strong>&#8216; version, but it still quite wonderful. (And as such, all is forgiven for your involvement in that <em>Sgt. Pepper<\/em> film travesty, Peter.) By any measure, it&#8217;s a success, and pointed the way toward his subsequent well-received material.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2015, Omnivore Recordings has reissued three albums from Peter Frampton. They&#8217;re each quite different from one another, but since they&#8217;ve been put into the market at once, that&#8217;s how [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,64,65],"tags":[1622,1691],"class_list":["post-8789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rawk","category-reissue","category-review","tag-omnivore-recordings","tag-peter-frampton","cat-62-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8789","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=8789"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9591,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8789\/revisions\/9591"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}