Critical Mass

John Hiatt attempts the high art of blues

John Hiatt
John Hiatt

I got into a conversation the other day with one of those guys who just doesn't get it. He insisted that pop music was all well and good -- he even liked the Beatles and the Stones a bit -- but it wasn't "real music." Those voices weren't bel canto; they couldn't sing to the back wall of an auditorium; most of those guys were microphone eaters who couldn't even read music. It was just simple stuff: As the rockabilly artist Unknown Hinson says, "A damn 15-year-old punk could do it."

As I get older, I'm less and less interested in getting into arguments with these folks. They have a point, I guess. Some of the best rock 'n' roll is performed by amateurs. Part of what makes pop great is that it values feeling and heart over virtuosity. You don't need a great voice or conservatory training to make a great record. Sometimes the best music is made by relatively unskilled -- or at least uneducated -- players straining against their limits.

But I know what my friend was saying. Because of his background, his training, his education, he hears it differently. I look at slam poets the same way he regards Barbra Streisand and the Ramones. I mean, it's great and all, but it's not William Carlos Williams. Or Miller Williams. Usually it's just kids having fun. Though I'll allow that every once and a while the transcendent might break in.

I'm a critic by trade, which means some people think my job is sorting and rating, putting things in hierarchical order. What are the 100 best movies? The top 10 live albums? Which vodka should I drink if I want to impress people who pretend to know a lot about vodka? Some people think critics are professional snobs.

Well, it doesn't do any good to deny that you're a snob. A snob is like an intellectual in that you don't get to decide whether or not you are one. But what's really important is the quality of the connection a critic makes with his audience, not the degree of difficulty, and that contextualizing work is more important than delivering some sort of thumbs-up, thumbs-down verdict.

So I think it's likely that Howlin' Wolf is as great an artist as Beethoven and just as worthy of consideration.

Which sort of leads us to John Hiatt's new release, Terms of My Surrender (New West). It's by and large an acoustic blues album, blocked out in the sort of familiar, comfortable changes and open and movable chords that inform the autodidact guitar player. There's nothing particularly tricky about the form -- you move from E to A to B7 and you've got the spine of a song. A kid could do it -- thousands do, every day.

We can speculate about what moved Hiatt to do a blues album at this particular point in his career; the publicity poop says he was encouraged to do so by the lead guitarist in his touring band, Doug Lancio, who produced this album. Lancio wanted Hiatt to reconnect with the acoustic guitar after a period of neglecting the instrument.

As someone who has followed Hiatt since 1974's Hanging Around the Observatory, I'll maintain that his progression from would-be pop star and musician's musician to grand old bluesman is further evidence of the world's unfairness. While there was a blip, beginning with 1987's Bring the Family, hitting its peak with 1988's Slow Turning and ending in 1990 with Stolen Moments (his highest charting album) when it looked as though he might achieve something like genuine stardom, Hiatt's record sales have never been commensurate with his talent.

There are lots of reasons why. Even before the record business collapsed, Hiatt has never been easy to put in a bin. He started as a country singer-songwriter, morphed into a skinny-tie-wearing New Wave raver (comparisons to Elvis Costello are apt) and recorded one album with David Bowie's producer Tony Visconti before settling into a rootsy Americana groove that lately has devolved into Willy Lomanesque dad rock. Record companies couldn't figure out what to do with him; he couldn't figure out what to do with himself. One of the reasons I'm so drawn to him is his eclecticism. I always liked his songs that (unlike "Thing Called Love" and "Sure As I'm Sitting Here") didn't become big hits for other artists.

At this point, Hiatt may well look back with some bitterness. Maybe he has reconciled himself to being who he is. In any case, this record feels as relaxed and organic as any he has made since 2000's Crossing Muddy Water, a remarkable stripped-down acoustic album with songs that seemed drawn from personal experience. The title song has been read as Hiatt's response to his first wife's suicide; "Only the Strong Survive" is an elliptical fable about a car crash, male confusion and (I think) marital infidelity that moves me to profound sadness.

Terms of My Surrender has no such moments, but it's a decent album, an obvious reaction to the near-stadium quality of his albums (Mystic Pinball, Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns) of the past few years. It's made up of songs that are less personal and more conventional than Hiatt's best, but that retain the wry humor and wised-up sensibility that have always informed his work. He's singing (mostly) in character here, and reveling in the voice that he used to process and cloak in filters. It's one of his greatest assets now, a gruff, yet warm instrument that glows like an old vacuum tube.

A couple of songs are throwaways. "Old People" is a novelty number that needs to be heard only once, if that. "Marlene" sounds like a demo he'd pitch to Jimmy Buffett. The best tracks, such as "Baby's Gonna Kick," a grudging and playful acknowledgment of misbehavior that would sound at home at a Tuesday night blues jam, and the deeply grooving, conciliatory title track are at the least sonically assured. It's hard not to shiver when Hiatt gets to the payoff couplet: "Where's the glory in ashes and dust?/ At the end of the story, there's just us."

In the final analysis, it is another Hiatt album. It is your right to remain ignorant of it and I wouldn't blame you if you do. It's the sound of a prickly, under-recognized 61-year-old artist who is operating in a field that some people don't even credit as worthy of adult attention hitting the reset button. Guys like Hiatt go back to the blues when they're looking for something that's hard to find in the modern world, something that feels elemental and universal, something that might outlast the decay of its final note. (I don't know that. I'm guessing, but that's kind of my job.)

It's part of the process, which is always more interesting and instructive than the result. Sure, a kid can play the blues. Anyone with a few hours to spare can learn to shape their fingers into open chords on a guitar neck. You don't have to go to Juilliard. You don't even have to be very smart.

If you do it right -- if you are able to engage the hearts and minds of your fellow creatures -- none of that matters. If you do it with an aria and 100 musicians, that's great. It really is.

But some people can do it with a cheap guitar and a songwriter's voice.

Email:

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

Style on 08/24/2014

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