Word: blazing
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...Jackson has been having his anxiety attacks engraved in wax over a decade; Blaze of Glory, his latest release, is the eleventh in a long line of Jackson neuroses, and it shows--for better and for worse...
...Blaze of Glory...
...news is that a facile Joe seems to preclude an emotional, sincere Joe. Maybe the alienated, angry young man routine is wearing thin for him; maybe these particular tunes don't rouse him to an emotional commitment. Whatever the reason, when Jackson stepped into the studio to record Blaze of Glory, he left his soul at home. The resulting LP is strangely disappointing; it offers twelve eminently listenable tunes by a masterful songwriter who, unfortunately, seems to have set himself on cruise control and shortchanged his own work...
Jackson announces in the liner notes that each side of Blaze of Glory is meant to be listened to continuously, "as if it were a song cycle." The operative verb here is "as if it were," because no matter what Jackson says, removing the spaces from in between songs does not a song cycle make. Take, for instance, the opener, "Tomorrow's World." It begins promisingly, with breathy vocals sitting side-saddle on a set of naked guitar arpeggios, driven by an obsessive pattern and punctuated by an incredibly satsifying bass drum. Particularly effective, too, are a series of abrupt...
Side Two opens with "Rant and Rave," a tempo-shifter with fun horn charts and fascinating rhythms; this is followed by "Nineteen Forever," another anthemic track in the "Blaze of Glory" mode and about as interesting. "The Best I Can Do" is a ballad that suffers by comparison with its Side 1 counterpart, largely because it's melody becomes monotonous after the requisite three or four repetitions...