Written in the wake of his twin brother Maurice’s death and released two years after his own passing, Robin Gibb was always an emotional type of a guy and 50 St. Catherine’s Drive’s 17 songs have the sweep of a Greek tragedy:it is relentless in its widescreen stories of a past so completely gone that even singing of it, even remembering being a child raised at the album titles address, even reaching through a soaring sorrow on the masterful “Days Of wine And Roses” doesn’t close the story for him.
In Rolling Stone last year, his brother the leader of the Bee Gees Barry seemed completely overwhelmed by grief at Robin and Maurice’s death, and as Barry in the story seemed devastated and alone, so does Robin on this album. The second song on the album, the midtempo “Instant Love” finds Gibb claiming his rights as a man who was true to love wanting the love finally returning. It’s a strange song -way overproduced with the vocals over dubbed and a thoroughly doctored vocal coming out everywhere and the sentiments attempt some sort of huge pronouncement and miss it of course.
The song is both lovely and wearying, the sheer weight of these pop songs overwhelm you before you’ve even begun. By the time you reach the Bee Gees cover, “I Am The world”, the song is more than it was. The 1966 was fussier and not as deeply felt as this one, the Spanish horns are gone now and Robin’s voice is deeper and very deeply felt. It fits in well which means I guess, his muse hasn’t flown far on this song.
By the penultimate track “All We Have Is Now”, it is hard to know quite how to react, “nothing’s by design” he claims which suggest he must have felt as though there is no Maurice anywhere, the lack of a designing force is sorrowful stuff,. It’s been an hour and it is just heartbreaking and horrified. 50 St. Catherine’s Drive isn’t merely a downer, but it is a bummer as well. But extreme sorrow is a great pop music subject and the album has the powers of its conviction. The last song finds Robin back in “Sydney”, “I’m back in Sydney, my brothers are with me, do it or die”.
A powerful album and a more than fitting testament, this isn’t even catharsis, it is art, Robin changes form from feeling to sound.
Grade: B+
