If you think you can't go home again just listen to Revival, the first album of new John Fogerty material since returning to the label that made and nearly broke him. The sounds, songs, and themes of Revival are classic John Fogerty, which is (mostly) good news.
"Don't You Wish It Was True" opens the album with him dreaming of looking into heaven and seeing light, beauty, and harmony. It is another rewrite of John Lennon's "Imagine," but a tuneful one. The music shuffles and swings, evoking pictures of porch swings in front of grand, Southern houses and kids playing in parks.
The breezy sounds and words of "Don't You Wish it Was True" are thickened slightly as his visual trajectory returns to earth and a world that has gone to hell in a handbasket for the Western feel of "Gunslinger." It's an interesting metaphor in the context of this album. Fogerty takes direct aim at the Bush administration throughout the album for cronyism and warmongering but looks for a gunslinger to bring some law and order. The shooting doesn't bother him, just the targets.
It's an interesting shift from "can't we all just get along" to "we need somebody to kick a little ass around here" in the first two songs to the political screeds that follow. "Long Dark Night" and "I Can't Take It No More" are dated and clumsy, lacking subtlety and musicality. The snap and bite of the music is undermined by a failed attempt at cleverness in the lyrics of "Long Dark Night." Rather than sounding sharp and righteous, the words are glib, limp, and lame. "I Can't Take It No More" is a rant and a riff without a tune. Unlike "Fortunate Son," this time he forgot to write a song to go with his rant.
Article comments
1 - Pico
Fogerty records tend to have a few whiffs in them but usually worth picking up for all the times he connects. I expect that this will be worth it, too.
Well done, Josh.
2 - Mark Saleski
what the hell, does Benmont Tench play on every freaking record you own? ;-)
3 - Josh
Only the good ones. ;-)
4 - Josh
Thanks, Pico. You've hit the nail with this one. The connections make it worthwhile.
5 - El Bicho
The music is so good, yet I am utterly disappointed in some tracks. I really wish he would have come up with better lyrics on his anti-Bush songs. Hell, they would have been better as instrumentals.
"Fortunate Son," a timeless classic that will apply forever. Ripping on Bush and Cheney in “Long Dark Night”, already tired, pointless in a couple of years.
6 - Josh
There are some really good songs on this record, but "Long Dark Night" is appalling. That whole "Georgie/Brownie/Rummy/Dickie" thing is garbage.
The album could have been so much more. He needed to turn up the Tench!
7 - Ritas
Loved "Long Dark Night" and it's so true. Everyone is buying the CD for this song.
8 - El Bicho
"Everyone is buying the CD for this song."
If that actually is true, I would be embarrassed to tell people. It sounds like it was written by a teenager. I might see him in November and LDN is going to be the bathroom song.
9 - Warp0
Hahhahaha.
Right wingers don't like the lyrics .. gee, thats to bad, huh? Best Fogerty album since 1973. If it wasn't for the lyrics you'd be saying the same.
10 - Josh
I like a lot of things about this album, Warp0, a lot of things. I don't have a problem with political or activist sentiments in lyrics, I have a problem with bad lyrics. Fogerty is a great writer and there are some excellent songs on this record, but some of his lyrics are a bit dodgy.