Both of those singles (by Billy Paul and the Temptations, respectively) were huge pop hits in 1972, when Joe Henry was just eleven. Which is a weird coincidence, because, after all its subtle evocations of ’70s soul, Fuse concludes with two songs that each reference a completely different type of 1972 pop masterpiece: Randy Newman’s Sail Away. Henry’s “Beautiful Hat” includes almost exactly the sort of muted and mournful horn charts (here provided by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band) that made the opening of Sail Away’s title track so hauntingly seductive, and the closing “We’ll Meet Again” draws on the early 20th-century pop music that inspired Newman cuts such as “Let’s Drop The Big One Now”.
Henry’s often raspy and low-key delivery, and his knack for ironic yet emotional character studies, only heightens the Newman comparison. And it makes me wonder: Could it be that whatever music’s in the air when you come of musical age — say, around nine, ten or eleven — will inevitably determine, at least in part, the music you’ll be drawn to the rest of your life?
You can’t push something like that too far, of course. Different strokes for different folks and, at any rate, so many repressed adults spend their lives believing maturity means rejecting childhood’s joys that for some people the exact opposite might be more accurate. Then again, on Wilco’s new Summer Teeth, the primary reference point I’ve identified is the Electric Light Orchestra. ELO’s walking-in-quicksand ballad “Telephone Line” was a Top Ten hit the very summer that Jeff Tweedy turned ten.
In fact, ELO leader Jeff Lynne’s fingerprint is all over Wilco’s latest, though that influence is never more explicitly cited than on the breathtaking pop of “Shot In The Arm”: the spacey, swirling synths; the clipped, rhymed lines and booming timpani; the long, straight string lines that rise and rise, then deflate to a hush in slippery glissandos — all of it would fit perfectly on ELO’s A New World Record (1976) or Out Of The Blue (1977).
Elsewhere on Summer Teeth, the ELO-isms show up more as isolated sounds: the metronome drive of “I’m Always In Love”; Jay Bennett’s panting, calliope-styled organ on “She’s A Jar”; the processed, almost steel-sounding guitars, or synths, or whatever they are, that kick off one song called, uh, “ELT”; and all those rubbery strings that show up everywhere (or are those actually synths programmed to mimic strings?).
Throughout the disc, if you listen closely, you’ll also hear other ’70s references. There are real connections here to wonderful, keyboard-based singles by, among others, Eric Carmen, ABBA, the Babys, Queen — all of whom, by the way, had significant chart success in 1976 and ’77.
For those who might be uncomfortable with such bubblegum-pop allusions, plenty of pre-approved pop references also are apparent. There’s certainly a lot of solo John and Paul in the album, not to mention Magical Mystery Tour-era Beatles. There’s a heaping helping of Pet Sounds/Smile-style Brian Wilson, and some late Big Star too, especially in the way “Pieholden Suite” keeps changing directions, all of them unabashedly sweet and fragile and beautiful.
In the end, though, Summer Teeth, with its huge, synth-heavy arrangements and 48-track punch, is an unabashed late-’70s pop record through and through. Its main inspiration is post-Beatles pop as played in the final days of a pre-punk world, the kind of music made by insecure pop stars who hide on the backs of buses, misunderstood and waiting for their covers to be blown, admired by fans who are comforted to know they aren’t the only lonely ones.
Indeed, as it often was on much of the best ’70s pop, loneliness is a constant theme on Summer Teeth. At one point, Tweedy advises on “How To Fight Loneliness”, but the weariness in his voice (and the wistful organ and bass of Jay Bennett and John Stirratt, respectively) make it clear that he’s not even fooling himself. Elsewhere, Tweedy’s lyrics can swerve, even in the course of a single song, from romantic innocence to the most visceral poetry. Near the beginning of “Shot In The Arm”, for example, Tweedy sings sweetly, “We fell in love in the key of C,” but by the end of the bridge he’s flat screaming: “Something in my veins, bloodier than blood.”
What that bloody mess is exactly — addiction, abuse, crumbling relationships, terrifying loss — flits in and out of view more than necessary, thanks to lyrics that tend to become increasingly abstruse as the album progresses. Early on, however, when Tweedy’s details and metaphors are honed as finely as they’ve ever been, the songs have an intense, devastating power. And even when they don’t, the album’s sound keeps you listening close, in case they pay off. Whether at their sweetest (the lullaby “My Darling”) or their darkest (very nearly everything else), whether Tweedy’s vocals are echoey and processed or naked to the world, the songs are underscored here in stunningly dramatic fashion, presenting even the grimmest tales and the most harsh confessions in a lush and gorgeous pop language that always sounds as if there might still be one more last chance to hope…for the singer and his relationships, and for rock ‘n’ roll.
Scanning the vast rock-soul-pop-country spectrum, Tweedy, Bennett, Stirratt and drummer Ken Coomer refuse to be bound; they will borrow whatever they damn well please, and reshape it into whatever combination they need, to make their music — to make pop music. Like a great ’70s Top 40 station, Wilco plays the hits, all of them, and they dare us to to sing along again, like we were still kids at heart.
