plorentz's Full Review: Voices [Remaster] by Hall & Oates
It’s New York, the summer of 1977, and there’s a killer on the loose. And damned if he isn’t a Hall & Oates fan…
For Hall & Oates, it must have been difficult to find out that their first really really big hit single “Rich Girl”, which topped the Billboard charts in the spring of '77, was also a really really big hit with David Berkowitz, the serial killer formerly known as the Son of Sam, who claimed that listening to the song got him pumped up to pump yet another victim full of bullets.
But leave it to Hall & Oates to turn that into a song. “Diddy-Do-Wop (I Hear Voices)” which closes out and supplies the title for their 1980 album “Voices”, takes a classic doo-wop chorus and subverts it with a creepy (in that goofy low-budget Sweeney Todd sense) lyric about a guy who hears songs on the radio telling him to go out and kill.
It’s been more than 25 years, and David Berkowitz has become a born-again Christian (see his journals on www.forgivenforlife.com – some interesting reading, if for nothing else than how normal and well-adjusted it all seems); Hall and Oates, too, have lost their edge, in a matter of speaking, having long settled into bland adult contemporary coziness. It’s hard to imagine then, that at one time, their songs were some of the smartest, edgiest pop songs on the radio.
- - - - -
Though often pigeonholed as “blue-eyed soul”, these Philadelphia singer-songwriters had a broad, deep sense of musical history, and their songs drew equally from the folk, rock, country, and soul traditions – these guys had record collections, and they weren’t afraid to use them. But, it was just that diversity of influence that kept them from fully developing a signature sound, and throughout the 70s, they tried out lots of different directions, and worked with an incredibly diverse set of top-shelf producers – Todd Rundgren, Arif Mardin, David Foster, and Robert Fripp among others – all with interesting, but only intermittently successful (artistically and commercially) results. Of course, by the end of the decade, they weren’t just song craftsmen anymore. They were also studio pros.
And when David Foster, with whom they recorded the 1979 album “X-Static” finally pointed that out to them, they decided he was right, and made up their minds to produce their next album themselves, still something of a risky move in those days.
What resulted was one of the most consistent and focused and yes, wonderful albums of their career, and of the essential pop albums of the 80s. Drawing on virtually all of those different influences, but channeling them through the edgy sound of British new wave, “Voices” wasn’t just the best album Hall & Oates had released to that point, it was also the first real “Hall & Oates” album. The record achieved a heretofore unheard-of level of success for the band, spawning four Top 40 singles (including the #1 “Kiss on my List”), and signaling the start of what would become one of the 80s most notable winning streaks. By 1985, they would rack up six platinum albums and 16 hit singles, including five Number Ones.
- - - - -
Starting off with the wistful post-breakup song “How Does It Feel To Be Back” in which John Oates fantasizes about getting back together with his ex-girlfriend, “Voices” is loaded up with mostly uptempo songs, mostly about – you know – love and stuff; but, taking cues from the likes of Greg Kihn, Joe Jackson, and Graham Parker, the lyrics are clever enough to approach this well-worn subject matter from new, unexpected angles, often dressing bitterness and cynicism in more sympathetic guises.
In “It’s So Hard to Be In Love With You”, Oates finds himself blowing off a long-distance relationship with a surprising ease and lack of guilt; while Hall’s playful “United State” uses jaded governmental catchphrases to convey his restlessness within a failing relationship… and like many Hall & Oates songs, this one walks a fine line between the personal love song, and election-year social comment:
Make an amendment to the constitution
To preserve the state of our union
I stop believing what you say to me
There’s a tragic gap in credibility
The album has a carbonated power-pop crispness to it; songs like “You Make My Dreams” and “Big Kids” are like 7-Up for the ears: economical and sleak, and loaded with bright, clear layers of Todd Rundgren-inspired vocal harmonies. In the geometrically nervy “Gotta Lotta Nerve (Perfect Perfect)”, the melody and the guitar riffs are so mechanized, so even-numbered and right-angled that even Hall’s vocal sounds like that of a vintage Texas Instruments computer having discovered its own human spirit.
And as if to exact revenge on Phil Spector for ‘ruining’ the Beatles’ “Let It Be”, the boys turn the table on their cover of “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’”, streamlining it, and stripping the original of all of its Wall-of-Sound histrionics until it sounds properly digital. Hell, even the delightful “Kiss on My List” seems to reduce something sweet, intimate and affectionate to a mere statistic.
The boys pull focus but once – with an earnest (and lovely) stab at the kind of Stax/Volt balladry trafficked by the likes of Sam & Dave and Otis Redding in the 60s. And though Hall & Oates never released the song as a single, in some respects, it’s this album’s biggest hit; as covered by British blue-eyed soulster Paul Young, the song hit #1 in 1985, and became one of that year’s (and one of the decade’s) biggest hits. But it was also a closing of the circle proving that Hall & Oates were just as influential to a scene they themselves were influenced by.
Start to finish, “Voices” – which was recently re-mastered and reissued by BMG Heritage, with excellent liner notes by Ken Sharp - is a joy to listen to, a positively ebullient album, the kind that fairly begs to be in your CD player when you’re out driving aimlessly around the city on a clear Friday night in the middle of the summer.
- - - - -
“Voices” by Daryl Hall & John Oates
Originally release: RCA Records, 1980
Re-released 7/27/04, BMG Heritage
Produced by Daryl Hall & John Oates
43 min.
SONGS: How Does It Feel To Be Back - Big Kids – United State – Hard to Be In Love With You – Kiss On My List - Gotta Lotta Nerve (Perfect Perfect) - You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ - You Make My Dreams - Everytime You Go Away - Africa – Diddy Doo Wop (I Hear Voices)
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
![Voices [Remaster] by Hall & Oates](http://di1.shopping.com/images1/pi/8f/c4/dc/2002277250-177x150-0-0.jpg)
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.