Al Stewart
Russians & Americans

After a brief carousel ride on the bandwagon of recording success between 1976 and 1978, Al Stewart returns to being what he was before: a niche artist, far from the clamor and big stages; this is purely on a commercial level, but the '80s coincide with a period of great uncertainty for the Scottish artist. Good old Alastair experiences a situation common to many other artists who rose to fame in the '60s and '70s in this new and bizarre decade: mid-life artistic crisis and a terrible risk, losing oneself completely to anonymity, losing one's identity; Joan Baez covering U2 and Dire Straits and Elton John attempting to mimic George Michael are a couple of small but significant examples of this perverse mechanism, and Our Guy falls, fortunately only partially, into the trap: his sparse '80s output reflects an artist in a Janus-like version, who on one hand tries to continue being himself and on the other is, quite understandably, fascinated by new sounds and electronic oddities and tries to make them his own, with highly contrasting results.

Obviously, with this premise, cohesion, unity of intent, and stylistic fluidity that had made the unrepeatable trilogy formed by "Year Of The Cat", "Time Passages", and "24 Carrots" great, are thrown out the window: "Russians & Americans," which follows the publication of the latter by four years, is a container of nine songs that all travel on autonomous tracks, without the vague semblance of a common thread. Such heterogeneity had never occurred in any of Al Stewart's previous recordings, and it's not a good thing because an album is not just the algebraic sum of the tracks it contains; if it doesn't have a precise identity, it loses much of its value and usability, and this is a shame because, analyzing individual episodes, "Russians & Americans" would be a good album with many strengths and some weaknesses. The banal and pre-packaged rock of "Strange Girl" is something unworthy of the prestige and artistic stature that Al had accustomed us to, a scourge of the times, the pop-folk tinged with electronics of "Lori, Don't Go Right Now" at least has the dignity to settle as a good radio episode, but even here it feels like there's a lack of connection with these new sounds that really don't warm the heart and do not stimulate the imagination; "One, Two, Three (1, 2, 3)", a decent cover of an old '60s hit, doesn't really seem to fit into "Russians & Americans", completely anachronistic and out of place.

The approach to electronics, even new wave, however, brings something good, namely "Rumours Of War", an excellent ride with martial and solemn tones, even though the best lies in the episodes that reconnect most to Al Stewart's old style, particularly a stunning "The Gypsy And The Rose", a gripping folk with violins and accordion in great prominence, and the evocative "Accident On 3rd Street", with a conversational singing style reminiscent of Bob Dylan paired with a lovely and effective piano base. The title track, a pleasant folk-ballad with sweet and relaxed tones, appears, in hindsight, decidedly naive for its text inspired by the last frictions of the Cold War; Al Stewart, a great narrator of past history, doesn't reveal himself to be equally effective in reading the present of that time, while "Café Society", endowed with great communicative strength, pathos, and intensity, almost theatrical and also very refined and original in its continuous alternation of musical plots, deserved better fortune in a better album than this, which closes as it developed, in total incongruence, with the bitter country-folk of "The Candidate" once again showcasing Al Stewart's great skills with the acoustic guitar, further increasing the sense of chaos that hovers over the entire album, irreparably compromising it.

Evaluating "Russians & Americans" as a whole, with its underlying idea, overall vision, and flow, it would be a rejection without appeal, a flat out one, an indigestible mush of songs without the slightest logical thread, the album of an artist who seems to be trying his luck with a couple of truly notable style falls; "The Gypsy And The Rose" is, in the end, the only episode worthy of the Al Stewart period 1973-1980, other good performances like "Accident On 3rd Street," "Café Society," and even "The Candidate" are not enough to save an album that, to date, remains the worst of the Scottish songwriter's career, barely surpassing the equally troubled and problematic successor "Last Days Of The Century," where at least there is a faint underlying idea; the crystalline talent is still there, but with "Russians & Americans" we are truly in the depths of night: for the first hints of a second youth, it will be necessary to wait until 1993, for a return to the levels of the '70s, until 2005.