I’m Your Man I’ve listened to this 4 times today and I can’t work out if I like it or not. Lyrically I know I like it, there are some superb lines, couplets or whole songs, like Everybody Knows (a song I was previously aware of from its use in Palm Springs) or First We Take Manhattan. And vocally he sounds great, that older more gravelly tone with a nice hint of creepy sleaziness is excellent. But musically I just don’t know what's going on. Kudos to him for trying something different to update his sound, but in the way that Graceland sounds of its time but timeless, this sounds of its time but very dated. On some listens the hyper 80s keyboards and stacked backing vocals sound great against his voice, a nice, pleasingly odd contrast. And then on the next listen the whole thing sounds cheesy as all balls. I suppose it really comes down to whether the songs that work outweigh the ones that don’t. First We Take Manhattan, I think this is just about on the right side of the line. I like the Pet Shop Boys feel of it and keyboards, despite being a bit cliche, I like alot. The melody and vocal is great, very Nick Cave, but the backing vocals are pretty cheesy and rather obtrusive. I’m not entirely sure about Ain’t No Cure for Love. It has that egregious sax in the intro and a structure lifted almost completely from Every Breath You Take, but I do like the chorus and the lyric. Could go either way, this one. Everybody Knows, I think is great though, excellent lyric and melody and nice pulsing rhythm and keyboard and string riff. The oud is great and the backing vocals work well with the song. I’m Your Man is pretty successful too, despite the keyboard solo. Take this Waltz I don’t think is great. He does some waltz time stuff on his first album and its nice, but this doesn’t sound good. But its not as bad as Jazz Police, an almost Partridgean level exercise in terribleness, with its pitch shifted keyboards and awful backing vocals. I like I Can’t Forget, the pedal steel giving it a nice touch of human warmth and country edge working well with the chorus and backing vocals. Tower of Song is great, the more restrained instrumentation and nicely arranged backing vocals give it an excellently off kilter atmosphere, again with a great vocal and lyric. So overall it’s a bit of a curate’s egg. When it works well like on Everybody Knows and Tower of Song its excellent, but when it’s bad, as with Jazz Police, it’s pretty awful. But, despite that, I still found it fascinating and I certainly didn’t get bored of listening to it. Therefore it’s a bit tricky to rate, it’s inconsistency would make it a 3, but it is weirdly intriguing and I admire him jumping wholeheartedly into a new sound. And the lyrics and vocals are great, and there are a couple of very good songs. I’ll just tip it into a 4 on that basis. 🍌🍌🍌🍌 Playlist submission: Everybody Knows