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TIME: Almanac 1990s
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1994-03-25
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<text id=93TT1784>
<title>
May 24, 1993: Reviews:Music
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993
May 24, 1993 Kids, Sex & Values
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
REVIEWS
MUSIC, Page 85
Down Home And Uptown
</hdr>
<body>
<p>By JAY COCKS--With reporting by Elizabeth L. Bland/New York
</p>
<qt>
<l>PERFORMER: Bruce Hornsby</l>
<l>ALBUM: Harbor Lights</l>
<l>LABEL: BMG</l>
</qt>
<p> THE BOTTOM LINE: This infectious, jazz-tinged rock comes straight
from Virginia, and from the bottom of a restless heart.
</p>
<p> "On the fringes of town, but also "sort of in the country":
that's the way Bruce Hornsby describes the place where he lives
and works now, outside Williamsburg, Virginia. He could just
as well be describing the infectious, idiosyncratic music he's
been recording since the breakthrough success of his first album,
1986's The Way It Is. Hornsby's tunes have a kind of metropolitan
melodic sheen, with unexpected breakaway rhythms, and a lyrical
simplicity that's straight-spined and deliberately unpolished--country music with a college education. Or, in the composer's
own words, "highbrow Southern rock."
</p>
<p> This new album may raise a few brows even higher. Relaxed and
intrepid in equal measure, each of the 10 songs on Harbor Lights
has pronounced jazz underpinnings. It is, in effect, a swellegant
trio record (Hornsby on piano, John Molo on drums, Jimmy Haslip
on bass), augmented by annunciations from the superstar firmament:
Bonnie Raitt, Jerry Garcia, Phil Collins, Branford Marsalis,
Pat Metheny. "The piano solos I played were always more about
jazz than rock, single-note lines over a pop context," says
Hornsby, a sometime keyboards man for the Grateful Dead. "It
was always where I was coming from."
</p>
<p> To forestall panic in the pop ranks, however, it should quickly
be added that Hornsby is not trying to bring Monk to Top 40.
Harbor Lights is a mainstream record, with no apologies offered
or required. You can hear traces of the jazz he loves--Bill
Evans, Bud Powell, Keith Jarrett--but Hornsby's creative instincts
are basically populist.
</p>
<p> The citizens of Williamsburg scrutinize each new Hornsby record,
searching for themselves or looking for the reflection of a
neighbor. "Sometimes," he says, "they find themselves. Sometimes
much to their chagrin." Talk of the Town is a bluesy riff on
interracial romance with a nifty Spike Lee video to match. That
may cause some splutters at the Chamber of Commerce, but The
Tide Will Rise (with lyrics co-written by younger brother John
Hornsby) is a lovely and compassionate evocation of the lot
of Virginia fishermen: "Never bowed to no one/ Always went my
own way/ Broke down, run aground, but I won't run away/ And
the tide will rise."
</p>
<p> The closing cut, Pastures of Plenty, has a title that echoes
Woody Guthrie, a piano solo that nods heavenward toward Bill
Evans, and an extended Jerry Garcia guitar excursion that gives
the whole piece the shaggy funk of a Dead concert. Purists in
any of those stylistic camps may not care for such a shotgun
synthesis, but Hornsby pulls it off with skill, a little underhanded
bravado and an utter lack of guile.
</p>
<p> The big time has not altered Hornsby's regional perspective.
He lives with Kathy, his wife of 10 years, and their twin boys
"about 2 1/2 miles from Main Street," in the house where Harbor
Lights was recorded. "I could cut a piano track and go in and
change a diaper," he reports. "I like the strong rootedness
of being there." That's not the usual definition of roots music,
but Hornsby's songs aren't usual, and he has a jazzman's improvisatory
way with definitions. That's the brightest of Harbor Lights:
the one that lights the way to something different.
</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>