![](\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/burton_cummings_above_the_g.jpg\")
Sometimes, life disappoints. You go into a new experience hoping it will meet your expectations, and it falls short. You did your best to not, as the Brogues sang, \u201cbuild your dreams too high.\u201d But despite your best efforts to approach the experience with few preconceived notions, it just plain didn\u2019t \u201chappen\u201d for you.<\/p>\n
And then you sat down to write about it.<\/p>\n
Burton Cummings<\/strong> has a long and illustrious career, both with the Guess Who<\/strong> and as a solo artist. The Guess Who earned and enjoyed a long string of hits; many of those songs remain classic rock radio staples to this day. And Cummings wrote or co-wrote most of those songs. His talents as a composer, performer and musician are beyond question, and his remains one of the most recognizable voices in rock music: if you hear a less well-known Guess Who cut (like the 1974 single \u201cStar Baby,\u201d one of the first 45s this writer ever purchased), you\u2019ll know the singer is a familiar voice.<\/p>\n The Guess Who threw in the towel in the mid 1970s, Cummings\u2019 songwriting partner Randy Bachman<\/strong> long having since left for Brave Belt<\/strong> and then BTO<\/strong>. Cummings enjoyed solo success , especially with 1976\u2019s \u201cStand Tall,\u201d a makeout song for the ages (or so my cooler friends insisted in those days).<\/p>\n Cummings\u2019 released output slowed drastically after 1981, however. Since then he\u2019s released only three albums, one of them a live set. You know that old rock inside-joke: \u201cBut they\u2019re big in Japan.\u201d Well, Burton Cummings remains something of an institution in his native Canada, where\u2019s he\u2019s popular on his own and as part of several Guess Who reunion tours. (Side note: former late-era Guess Who member Anyway, Above the Ground<\/em> is Cummings\u2019 first collection of new studio material in nearly twenty years. (Oddly, though the album is being promoted as a new release, it came out in 2008, where it charted respectably in…Canada. And I\u2019m sad to say that while Cummings\u2019 voice remains in fine form, the songwriting and arrangement is pedestrian.<\/p>\n Part of the problem seems to lie with the fact that Cummings has a lot to say. Perhaps it\u2019s since he hasn\u2019t recorded much in recent years, but these nineteen(!) songs all seem to go on and on lyrically. Even if they feature repeated lyrical lines, they seem to go on too long. How about a guitar solo, Burt?<\/p>\n \u201cCrazy if You Mess With the Gods\u201d opens the album with a faux-rock feel, and things never really pick up from there. From the lyrics, you\u2019d quickly glean the second track is called \u201cJunior Won\u2019t Behave,\u201d but there\u2019s little in the way of rock and roll naughtiness in the playing. The album is possessed of a too-by-the-numbers feel. The antithesis of a raw rock and roll record like, say Nick Curran<\/strong>\u2019s Reform School Girl<\/em><\/a>, Cummings\u2019 album sounds unmistakably as if it were put together using ProTools. Every note is in place, but it\u2019s all lifeless and \u2013 I must day \u2013 uninteresting.<\/p>\n Cummings\u2019 attempts at humor are hit-or-miss. \u201cT.P.O.S.\u201d is a country-flavored romp, and you get three guesses what the abbreviation stands for. But the song doesn\u2019t swing; it feels stiff\u00a0 and phoned-in. \u201cAny Minor Miracle\u201d sounds like a exceedingly well rehearsed bar band (Holiday Inn division) rewriting a Bob Seger<\/strong><\/a> song from the lackluster Against the Wind<\/em> era. Now, if you actually like <\/em>Seger\u2019s style of non-rock balladry and want to hear a smoother singer do it, then Cummings is your man. Others will want to hit the skip button.<\/p>\n Which would bring you to \u201cPowers at Play,\u201d which sounds musically like an outtake from Kenney Jones<\/strong>-era Who. <\/strong>And if you are getting the impression that I\u2019m referencing works from other acts well past their sell-by date, then you\u2019re getting my drift. \u201cPowers at Play\u201d feels overwritten lyrically, underdeveloped musically.<\/p>\n And on it goes. \u201cPonderlust\u201d threatens to bring back some of Cummings\u2019 distinctive, soulful electric piano playing. But the song itself offers nothing distinctive. And you\u2019ll be forgiven if you ask yourself, \u201cWait: haven\u2019t I heard this song on the album already?\u201d What\u2019s really scary is that you\u2019re only on Track 6 out of nineteen.<\/p>\n \u201cRollaway\u201d is a throwaway as Cummings delivers it. It\u2019s a piano-led gospel vocal number that\u2019s Attempt Number Two at humor on Above the Ground<\/em>.<\/p>\n Cummings gained considerable notoriety for his song \u201cAmerican Woman.” So in the 21st century he takes aim southward with \u201cWe Just Came From the U.S.A.\u201d If you like your anthemic rock insipid and lunkheaded a la Billy Squier<\/strong> and Bon Jovi<\/strong>, then you might get a kick out of this. The band-in-a-box feel doesn\u2019t help.<\/p>\n Worse still, though, throughout the album Cummings seems to be grasping for style upon which to hang his musical hat. Rather than sounding varied and textured, the result is confusion. On \u201cPretty Pictures\u201d he makes soft-rock a la Paul Simon. On \u201cLook Out Charlie (There\u2019s a new Bartender in Town)\u201d he\u2019s trying on Billy Joel<\/strong>\u2019s late 1970s style. True, he\u2019s quite successful at capturing the feel, but if that\u2019s what you\u2019re up for, why not just spin Turnstiles<\/em>?<\/p>\n The liner notes indicate that the next track is called \u201cKurt\u2019s Song.\u201d That\u2019s tantalizing: maybe it\u2019s a number where Cummings addresses a former Guess Who bandmate. Nope: it\u2019s an uptempo ballad of no particular merit. Not at all a bad tune, \u201cKurt\u2019s Song\u201d actually rates as one of the album\u2019s more effective stylistic exercises. But if you\u2019re wondering who Cummings is aping on this one, it\u2019s Jackson Browne<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cRichard\u201d displays Cummings\u2019 worst aspects. The music is forced melodrama, and the lyrics do match the music. But here Cummings\u2019 vocals are overly mannered and devoid of passion. He hits the notes and displays that his vocal chops are still very much intact, but the emotion doesn\u2019t come off as real.<\/p>\n There are seven more tracks on Above the Ground<\/em>. None of them ranks among Burton Cummings\u2019 best work. \u201cDream\u201d is nice enough, and for once does have a genuine vibe to it. \u201cUp in the Canyon\u201d tries — and fails \u2013 to get funky. \u201cRevelation\u201d tries on another style: the soft-samba kind of thing that Todd Rundgren<\/strong> did on With a Twist\u2026<\/em><\/a> But Todd had stronger material to work with. \u201cRevelation\u201d is an attempt at a rewrite of Abbey Road<\/em>\u2019s \u201cMean Mr. Mustard.\u201d Accept no substitutes. \u201cInvisible\u201d cops a melody from another song of old (you figure it out if you care).\u00a0 \u201cRetribution\u201d is the album\u2019s longest track at five and a half minutes. It\u2019s an okay song that aims for the big guitar aesthetic, but again it sounds canned, lifeless.<\/p>\n Above the Ground<\/em> concludes with the title track, and musically it stands head and shoulders above the preceding eighteen numbers. Cummings doesn\u2019t seem in a hurry here, and while he\u2019s got a lot to sing, his unforced manner and clear piano figure work well to create a memorable song. Two or three more tunes of this caliber, and a bit of pruning, and we\u2019d have a good-to-very-good album in Above the Ground<\/em>. As such, we don\u2019t. Hope springs eternal that Cummings will adopt a more \u201clive\u201d approach on his next studio outing, play it less safe, and maybe rock out just a little bit more convincingly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes, life disappoints. You go into a new experience hoping it will meet your expectations, and it falls short. You did your best to not, as the Brogues sang, \u201cbuild […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Kurt Winter<\/strike> Jim Kale<\/strong> owns that band name, so neither Cummings nor Bachman are permitted to tour using it. The music business is weiiird, man.)<\/p>\n