Joe Jackson
Laughter & Lust

Joe Jackson, pop wizard, perpetual chameleon capable of painting himself with the colors of the late '70s rock-punk (with albums like "Look Sharp" and "Beat Crazy") or hiding within the Latin rhythms of an elegant and sophisticated pop like that of "Night and Day" (1982) and "Body and Soul" (1984), and capable of blending into the melting pot of genres of albums like "Big World" (1986) and "Blaze of Glory" (1989). A genius who, however, reaches the end of the '80s out of breath because the music business world is not for him, he is not the type who can continue making exhausting tours and videos just to sell albums, for him true music is something else. His greatest musical hero is Beethoven, a misfit, and in many ways, he also feels like a misfit in the pop-rock world, but he also has a strong character and is still able to compose yet another high-level pop-rock album, kind of like a farewell (at least temporarily) to that fictitious world (in the following decade, he will compose music away from rock stylistic elements, music suspended between classical and new age, suspended in a "grey area", a definition given by Jackson himself, a grey area where pop intersects with classical and naturally with many other genres).

But for now, it is still rock time, and indeed "Laughter and Lust" starts with "Obvious Song", one of his best rock songs. Overwhelming rhythm and grit galore. A beautiful track that almost seems like an out-take from that absolute masterpiece that was "Night and Day", just 9 years earlier (the song is also paired with a very ironic video, a must-see). The album will have good success, reaching the 41st position in the UK chart and 116th in the USA chart. In the Netherlands, it will reach the 15th position.

After "Obvious Song", the album continues with the brilliant and frantic rhythm of another great rock-pop song, "Going Downtown".

"Stranger than Fiction" suddenly and drastically lowers the album's level. A light and nice pop song, but certainly not of the level one would expect from an author with a capital A like Joe Jackson. The fourth track on the list, "Oh Well", is a beautiful cover (in Afro-Cuban style) of a Fleetwood Mac song. It continues with three excellent pop songs like "Hit Single", "Jamie J.", and "It's All Too Much", tracks that do not scream masterpiece but are still very enjoyable, full of rhythm and sarcastic irony.

The second part is decidedly better than the first, less rhythmic and more focused on emotions and a melancholic and sad romanticism. It mainly talks about failed romantic stories and loneliness (the album coincides with the musician's second failed marriage). In this second part, Jackson's voice opens up (as it rarely has during his career) to emotions and pain that truly gush from the heart. These tracks have always moved me a lot because if you listen carefully to Jackson's voice, you can perceive all the pain for the end of a love story, but also for the loneliness, anger, and depression that follow.

The second part of the album opens with a great track like "When You're Not Around", a song about the end of a love, almost like a "Breaking Us in Two" ten years later ("You came into my life and then you left...You made me feel like a fool just for wishing you would stay...I can't feel the coffee in my cup...I feel down, like I'm going underground when you're not near me...").

It continues with the beautiful "The Other Me", a perfect, intense pop song with a great atmosphere (echoing certain Beatles-like atmospheres: "I wish we stayed friends...I wish we continued talking together....imagine if we were still 17 years old, imagine how many things we could do...I know those days are over and it saddens me that those games have vanished...).

"The Other Me" then gives way to "Trying to Cry", one of Jackson's best (and most dramatic) songs about loneliness (perhaps the same level is "Solo-so low" from the album "Rain" in 2008). "Trying to Cry" starts very slowly, with Jackson's voice almost speaking, in a dark and dramatic tone ("Look at that guy standing in the corner, the one drinking another glass...There's a look in his eyes that I've seen so many times before...I've seen it in the mirror and I've seen it in my friends when we realized we had lost ourselves...he'll have two or three more drinks and then the room will start spinning..."). The song concludes with a crescendo ending that gives you goosebumps. The two final pearls of the album are called "The Old Songs" and "Drowning".

"The Old Songs" is a high-level pop waltz with great emotional impact, almost an expressionist brushstroke. Jackson unfolds a voice that opens up to very strong tones, almost as if he wanted to hit the listener with a whip of cynicism towards "happy couples" and "eternal love", almost suggesting to us that that "A Slow Song" requested to the DJ (at the end of "Night and Day"), "a slow song" to reconcile with one's sweet half, was nothing but a dream, now only the "Old Songs" remain, indeed it is only in the "old songs" that speak of eternal love that one can dream of a different life and a happy relationship, but in reality, unfortunately, it is all different (and the same Joe seems to know it very well: "The old songs speak of eternal love and never speak of death, but a song can't bring us back together... How can this wonderful song be a lie?... Sing me one of the old songs, fill my heart with romance and rebellion... all we have to do is just dance...").

The next song is the wonderful and very sad "Drowning", which is as if it transports you inside a river where we are drowning with the author, drowning for all the love that has been lost along the way, drowning for broken dreams and for not being able to carry on a romantic story in which we, deep down, believed ("I don't love you, but I'm lost...I think of you and the ghosts of so many special moments that have been carried away by time... It's night, my heart is beating, I'm falling down, in a whirlpool of passions... there is laughter as I drown, like it happened to the many who got lost before me, damned by lust and sent to hell....And now cold water flows into my body and carries me, carries me away...and still, I keep drowning"). "Drowning" is a desperate cry towards a world that seems not to listen to us. A song that seems to swallow the same author, who in fact, after the album promotion tour will fall into the vortex of depression and for several years will no longer be able to either listen to or compose music. However, he will come out with a masterpiece entitled "Night Music".

But that is another story.