The thing about power pop is it is only as good as any given melody, which is lucky for career musician Steve Caraway because as a power pop album it is hit and miss but as a genre jumping album’s album it works superbly. From AOR to classic rock, from folk to new wave to Gospel to country, Boston’s Steve Caraway has released an album, twelve songs, that feels of a piece but also a statement of… faith?
Yet still, as a power pop album it has its moments and “Big Star” -a remembrance of Alex Chilton, has more than its moments. Immediately in the running for the song of the year, this ridiculously beautiful track earns its name, from the opening jingle jangle guitar to a bridge that swarms “we had a long cold December, it seems like forever since I heard ‘September Girls'” -the song sounds like Big Star but it doesn’t, and the deep loss, something Caraway writes about very well on “Home Fires” as well, digs under your skin. A true tribute and the albums best moment.
But not the only great moment. “Prospect And Washington” isn’t just a fine folk song, it points to the way the details make the song, the backing vocals here are such an extreme evocation and the run on words leading to the title almost hurries up your ears. Plus the instrumental break is pure melody. A truly great song, flipped later on the haunting and troubling “Quanah Parker’s Band” story of a Native American, told with unflinching integrity and honesty.
So who is Steve Caraway? Caraway is a Boston local hero who played with bands like Secret Service, Funbucket and Stolen Lions, before going solo. His 2008 Hurricane Season is some power pop guitar stuff, very very melodic but a little juvenile compared to On This Rock.
Which leads me to the title track itself, at the midway of the album, with a piano only and Steve’s tender vocal till the band joins in, it is the big time song the album has promised and what he does is take Gospel and makes it secular. It feels like it should be about God and it isn’t: it makes love a religion and placed in the middle of the song, Caraway uses his falsetto to lift up. This song makes the album more than the sum of its parts.
The heaviness is leavened with knockout rockers like “Don’t Leave”, a really pumped up little power pop masterpiece and “Justine” which sticks like bubblegum in your hair and on your finger: licky, sweet, stuff.
Caraway is a really good songwriter, and the album’s theme, faith in people, isn’t heavy handed: you can pick up on it as you choose; he has been doing this for years, he is a good, sometimes great rocker, and on the two albums I’ve heard, even at his worst he is never less than a complete pro.
Grade: B+
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