ALBUM REVIEW: Freedy Johnston Goes Retro on ‘Back on the Road to You’
Jeremy Gaunt
Posted On September 7, 2022
Assuming you are old enough, you only need to listen to the first few bars on Freedy Johnston’s new album, Back on the Road to You, to be carried back to the late 1970s and the light pop of adult-oriented radio.
The entire album is a series of rocky or moody little numbers that sit somewhere between the Little River Band and Stephen Bishop, who readers under, say, 50 can look up.
Freedy Johnston (photo by Marla Norton)
This is clearest on “The Power of Love” and “Somewhere Love.” The former is a jaunty, summer-nights offering with thumping lead guitar from Doug Pettibone. It actually references radio.
We are coming through the radio / With invisible powers
Reaching out to your heart / With a song much stronger than sorrow
The latter is a dreamy love song — at least it is telling someone that what’s being done to them is all about love — that even manages to drag in a where-are-you-Peter-Frampton guitar talk box.
This channeling of the ’70s was something of a plan, according to a press release announcing the album, which says the Los Angeles/Joshua Tree recording studio imbued it with “echoes of The Byrds, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young.”
That’s a big, big stretch. The songs are pleasant enough, with occasional bursts of something more and the odd clever lyrics that underline Johnston’s reputation as a gifted songwriter. And they are catchy — which means if 1970s AOR was still a thing, there could be a hit in there.
But the album lacks the punch that all the aforementioned artists bought to their music. Johnston has a good voice, but at least on this album, it is pretty range-bound, leading to a bit of sameness among the tracks.
It may just be me, but throughout what I could argue is the strongest song — “There Goes a Brooklyn Girl” — I kept wishing Lou Reed was singing it. It’s all about a mainstream gal and a guy on the borderline.
There goes a Brooklyn girl / There goes my baby
She just told me that she’s the one / Who’s gonna save me
She’s always sayin’ / That it’s all already been done
It needed something gutsy.
The big question for Johnston and his accomplished band — mainly Pettibone, Dusty Wakeman (bass), David Raven (drums), and Sasha Smith (keyboards) — is whether the world is ready for another bout of 1970s AOR.
I couldn’t tell you. But I did see some bell-bottoms on sale recently.
Freedy Johnston’s Back on the Road to You is out Sept. 9 on Forty Below Records.
