Nashville, TN. (Top40 Charts/ RCA Records) - Long before
Jimmy Buffett became a franchise for cheeseburgers in paradise and the intersection of tequila, ice and blender, he was a pretty marvelous populist poet of the palms'n'sea salt set. Slightly faded characters setting on barstools, comparing scars and stories, loves and losses, thrills and the will to keep drinking…
But when you become the flag in the beachhead of good-time-revelry and a license for the cubicle bound'n'corner office crowd to act the fool, then the trap becomes the music serving the show, the crowd, the illusion served up as reality. Gone in the blink of a salt shaker is the elegance of 'He Went To Paris,' the joie de vie of 'Pencil Thin Mustache,' the bawdy reality of hooker-meets-businessman on a slow afternoon 'Why Don't We Get Drunk (and Screw)' or the aging beauty of life lived fuller and more intensely through the exhaustion of 'Wonder Why We Ever Go Home' in favor of the clipped and cleverness of the staccato reggaetacularality of 'Volcano,' the tempest-tempoed 'Fins,' the 24/7 happy hour motif of '5 O'Clock Somewhere' and the always chuggable 'Margaritaville,' a perfectly good song gone cliché by far too many consonant optional quaff-along performances.
At 50-something, what's a pirate who's not just looked at, but conquered 40, to do? On Take The Weather With You, it appears grapple with both the best - and most obviously compromising - of what was. Because Jimmy Buffett knows the difference, makes his choices based on - what seems to be - what mass markets want rather than what the ones who thrive on his gift for emotionally nuanced story-telling, rich with overlooked elements and polaroids of moments had come looking - mostly in vain - for.
A courtly writer - somewhere between Hemingway's rugged man against nature and Patrick Conroy's deeply-feeling, detail-driven narratives, Buffett comes by his bottomless taste honestly. Here he enlists only the best for his latest adventure: Mark Knopfler ('Whoop De Doo'), Crowded House's Tim and Neil Finn (the title track), Mary Gauthier ('Wheel Inside The Wheel'), Guy Clark ('Cinco de Mayo in Memphis'), Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings ('Elvis Presley Blues'). Jesse Winchester ('Nothin; But A Breeze') and Merle Haggard ('Silver Wings') provide the grist for greatness.
Each song's plucked for an specific angle and facet on the themes of exuberance and escape or yearning and return. They capture conviviality with a spirit that's in sync with Buffett's own kaleidoscopic filter of life, yet the songs also temper that with the seriousness that settles upon dreamers when the party leaves, and at times leads them to their own ponderous places.
'Bama Breeze,' with its dominant acoustic guitar notes which harkens back to fern bars and beers joints anywhere, reflects what Buffett does best: looking over his shoulder to more innocent times, when people were young and carefree - and things just seem to make more sense. It's a portrait of every hole in the wall dive each one of us has up their sleeve as a private down-low refuge. It is gritty. It is real. Mick Jagger knew it, when he signed his name on the ladies room wall… the bouncer knows it, knowing a few underage pretty girls never hurt anybody, but sure can improve the mood… and the well at a place like the Bama Breeze never ever runs dry.
It's the juiciness of memories that make Buffett such a powerful aural narcotic. He casts a net, weaves a spell and puts you there - far from the beige and the gray of obligation, overwork and people who lost sight of the light. They are very same cardboard people who even forget that it's the depth of the stories that captivate you, more than the moronic chantalongs, suitable for drinking games and tail-gating for knuckle-draggers.
Song sense like this proves that Jimmy Buffett doesn't just know better, he knows best. Even more profoundly, he enlists Little Feat's Bill Payne, Mark Knopfler, soulslide Louisiane guitarist Sonny Landreth, co-producer and gifted writer Muscle Shoals own Mac McAnally to make sure each is given the best possible rendering, true to the intent and shining like diamonds.
These recordings of others' songs are jewels, one and all, and it suggests a respect for his peers that is laudable. Indeed, Weather's repertoire has pathos, imagination and joy at the prospect of how much life these songs can carry as a collection. Which makes much of his own work vexing.
For all the tropicali shuffle and cheap talk-up lead of 'Party At The End of The World' and aw shucks exasperation at 'Everybody's On The Phone' - both guaranteed to be huge in concert, shameslessly servicing the Parrothead nation who've drowned out the subtlety of his most potent work, it's not where Weather gains ground.
No, it's when he rolls back the game show shenigans that his true talent emerges unscathed. Jimmy Buffett is not a used car salesman, a Dale Carnegie booster or some late night tv infomercial-shyster; he's a staggering writer who can coax the sparkle from an unconventional soul's presence in 'Hula Girl at Heart' and make the world a little more magic because of her - and his song's - presence. 'Breathe in, Breathe Out, Move On' is exquisite. Philosophically in keeping with Buffett's perspective for laying out and laying back in the rough places, it offers solace to those crushed in the daily grind… a meditation of acceptance, being in the moment, easy in whatever comes along. Sketched with just a few images, the mindset evoked is expansive and engaging, just where you'd want to be, which ironically enough is how this whole thing got started to begin with.
To maintain one's clarity of vision, to truly understand what gives your gift value in a marketplace that often responds to the basest - not the most elevated of one's songs - is a feat beyond vertigo. Still, if anyone can aim their sextant at the human heart and find their way home, it should surely be this son of a son of a sailor.
