Bruce Hornsby may be a constant staple of the adult alternative charts thanks to his 1986 debut album which featured the smash hit "The Way It is," but don\'t try to box him too tightly - with each subsequent release, Hornsby has introduced a wider variety of influences on his albums, culminating in a collaboration this year with country legend Ricky Skaggs. On his 2005 solo release, Halcyon Days, there is a noticeable pastiche of styles, revealing the influence of everything from bluegrass to cabaret and musical theater to country, all rooted in the warm likability of the adult alternative Hornsby has always been famous for.
The first track and radio single, "Gonna Be Some Changes Made" features a signature Hornsby piano lick layered over drums that sound almost tribal. Throughout the album, the sound is full and multi-layered - nowehre moreso than on this track, where, in addition to the tribal drumbeats, there are multi-tracked harmonic vocals, a pump organ, and a driving bass line that anchors the variety of sounds nicely. The next track, "Candy Mountain Run," is rhythmic ear candy full of interesting sonic textures like sitars and dijeredoos. Both tracks also feature Eric Clapton on guitar.
Hornsby recruited some heavy hitters for this album - "Dreamland" features guest vocalist Elton John on a sweet ballad that also showcases Hornsby\'s warm piano sound. "Circus on the Moon" provides the conceptual framework for the album as a whole as well as the Big-Top-inspired album art. With this track, Hornsby establishes his intentions, "I\'d like you to see, I\'m a performer with skills/ Don\'t make fun of me with my whistles and my bullhorns and my bells/ And I hope you\'ll see it soon/ Getting about as much attention as a circus on the moon." This is an album about being an outsider looking at the world from a child-like perspective.
Hornsby and co-producer Wayne Pooley are experts at defying the auditory expectations of the listener to keep the sounds interesting - just when you think you know where a sound is going, it makes an about-face into new territory, suddenly dropping a word on a much-repeated chorus or subverting to a jazz progression from a standard 12-bar blues progression.
The title track is a bittersweet ballad that features Sting on guest vocals - unfortunately Sting sounds vaguely uncomfortable singing Hornsby\'s words so that his part on this song sounds like an emotionless poetry recitation. By contrast, Hornsby sings his own lyrics with passion and understanding that raises them above their odd station of being at times both eminently strange and then equally generic.
"What the Hell Happened" sounds like a song discarded from a quirky Broadway musical written by, say, Dr. John and Tom Waits. Hornsby\'s piano accompaniment to the silly lyrics is highly theatrical and his vocal delivery is straight out of Dr. John\'s New Orleans sound, a comparison bolstered by the wind quartet accompaniment. The sound is atonal at times, such that repeated listenings reveal an annoying quality to the song.
By comparison, the next song, "Hooray for Tom" is also Broadway-esque, but a much more pleasant melody rescues it from the irritation of the previous track. The lyrics are conversational, bordering on overly wordy, but the warm string arrangement and piano melody are positively captivating. "Heir Gordon" continues the string of novelty songs, and here Hornsby reveals his Waits-ian influence in full force. There\'s also an Appalachian bluegrass influence at work here and a clever punch of Dixieland woodwinds again. Not bad for such a simple song - for much of it, there\'s just Hornsby on piano and vocals.
"Mirror on the Wall" sounds the most like traditional, 1980s Bruce Hornsby, with more synthesized elements than any other song on the album. There\'s an underlying sonic texture of synthesizer on this song, which makes it sound more dated than the rest of the tracks. But again the lyrics are whimsical and the vocal harmonies are complex and interesting.
"Song F" is an entirely instrumental interlude that showcases Hornsby\'s mastery of the piano and the challenges of composing for it. True to his signature style, he remains comfortably in the octave around Middle C, but with the use of accompanying orchestra arrangements, he manipulates the sound from melancholy to threatening to resilient to hopeful, where it transitions beautifully into the final track, "Lost in the Snow." Here Hornsby is at the top of his form, with a driving beat, a melody full of motion, lovely complementary harmonics and a nice balance between whimsy and gravitas in the lyrics.
Overall, this is an album very much informed by Hornsby\'s experiences as a parent and his subsequent examination of the world through the eyes of his children. He uses a huge palette of sounds to create an album that is aurally fascinating, so that even when an individual track doesn\'t work, the album as a whole is provocative. The sound is very much anchored in the traditional "Bruce Hornsby" sound - the adult alternative of the \'80s - but there is so much at work here that it is difficult to categorize the modern Bruce Hornsby as anything but truly eclectic.
"Halcyon Days" is on sale August 10, 2004 from Sony BMG.
