Combining his penchant for critiquing foreign politics, playing into stereotypes of the upper class and doing it all with a wink and a smile without buckling under the danger of the situation. The song that best showcases his flexibility without having to write more than what is needed is the final track, Lawyers Guns and Money. Zevon can go from literate to metaphorical to bluntly macabre to sardonic without ever making a farce of the situation presented even Werewolves has an element of danger to it. A somewhat inverse result is achieved on Tenderness On The Block, which seems to go from cynicism to optimism with the instrumentation being as weaving throughout but without any explicit changes, mirroring the uncertain but generally flattering mood lyric-wise. A bouncy backing track with lots of little leads, a strong saxophone, a female doo-wop backing section and a single line chorus present a fun sonic backdrop against a story that starts out innocent and goes awry, where the singing acknowledges the ugliness of the titular character's heinous acts but the music remains gleeful, to deliciously dissonant and satisfying results. Zevon was unafraid to showcase his versatility, but was also careful to remain grounded and maintain as much willingness to throw himself in the dirt alongside whatever subject matter he would sing about.Ĭase in point, the title track. Both of these tracks are delivered very starkly, with Roland's tale sung with a lot of range and power for a man generally known only to sit behind a piano. This is much more directly underlined on Veracruz, a song directly invoking Woodrow Wilson's invasion of the country and describing loss of both human life and social pride as a result. But it's the jubilance through which this wry, dark subject matter is presented that gives the song a unique edge, and though Zevon would be more serious to varying degrees on other songs and albums, this rambling dark humour is a motif that would come to define him.Įlsewhere, Zevon delivers more straightforward stories, such as Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner, a murder ballad not too far divorced from a classic outlaw country ghost story, where violent foreign politics and personal revenge fantasies collide. There's a very 'in the moment' instant energy to the story even though the delivery, both from the band and from Zevon himself, is coasty, riding one groove for the entire song. An unmatchable rhythm backed up by a piano riff which we all know by heart by this point sees a fusion of old and new, classy and tacky, as Zevon rambles a stream of consciousness story about horror monsters mingling with modern day icons, with a hint of Victorian flair clashing obviously with the rock and roll excess dressing everything up. Dark humour was the name of Zevon's game, and the big single is a pretty good index of his sound, even if he would later deride it as a "joke song" written to get a dance hit out the door. What makes the album gripping is that, much like the man himself, it treads the line between pleasurable contemporary trends, manic self-indulgence and macabre imagery delivered with a snide drawl. And indeed, coming back to Excitable Boy some fourty years later, it's easy to see how the singer-songwriter stood out in the day, and that his album holds up just fine. Clearly, there must have been something enchanting about Zevon's talents if he could attract them at a period where they could have retired instantly. It's important to note that his talents did get noticed by others in the industry itself, despite his ultimate inability to escape one hit wonder status, because that should put into perspective how amazing it is that he was able to wrangle in half of Fleetwood Mac to perform on the big single the same year a little album called Rumors came out. It's actually important to note the strength of his songwriting across the board, because the connections he made as a result were both impressive on their own and, arguably, as much of a factor into the success that he did have. But let's face it, some idioms are only so tired because they're so true. Review Summary: Marrying literate, punchy, darkly humourous stories with some of the best rock grooves of the day, Excitable Boy is as enchanting now as fourty years ago.Ī lot of Zevon retrospectives will begin on some variation of the phrase "yes, Werewolves Of London is a great song, but did you know he has a whole career outside of that, whose exposure was only marred by its lack of mainstream exposure and certainly not of lack of quality?".
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