Jim Boggia
(BluHammock Music)
In “Listening to NRBQ,” from his third album Misadventures in Stereo, Jim Boggia has created one of the great summer rock ‘n’ roll songs. It’s also a piece of clever pop mythmaking. Breezy, sweet and poetically precise in its lyrics, the song – mid-tempo in the style of NRBQ’s “Me and the Boys” – recalls a teen romance during the Watergate era (“we would stay up late trashing Nixon”) that hit its romantic high when the couple drove around, yes, “listening to NRBQ.” There’s a wonderful meta-moment when Boggia recalls how Big Al Anderson would take a magical guitar solo and – voila! – Anderson actually shows up to take a solo. I’m sure this song is going to have a long life somewhere – TV or movie theme; downloads – and should inspire NRBQ to get back on the road and into the studio.
The rest of the album has some very good material, but also some problems. Boggia’s back story is a compelling one – partially blind and an only child, he grew up listening, really listening, to well-produced, substantive pop albums, apparently favoring them over the album-rock bombast favored by more outgoing but less sensitive kids. But he can’t quite shake that bombast out of his own voice. While Boggia’s singing is fine when winsome, it’s very generic – in a straining blues-rock kind of way – when he tries for something more forceful.
Still, his songwriting can be as smart and melodic as the sunshine-pop and power-pop musicians he admires (“8track,” “Chalk One Up for Albert’s Side,” written with Tony Asher), and it can have a dark side hidden under the gentle façade. The arrangements are also lively; seductive harmonies and colorful instrumentation make the sound something like Paul McCartney’s early solo work. But he’s not infallible. The closer, “Three Weeks Shy,” a tearjerker about a soldier dying on duty, is excessively melodramatic – despite a great horn arrangement – especially when he reads the names of what I assume are actual deceased soldiers at the end.
Standout Tracks: “Listening to NRBQ,” “8track” STEVEN ROSEN
