Nazareth
The Catch

How many female behinds have been the subject/object of album covers? I don’t know. Thousands, I’d guess. As for male ones, I can answer: one, that of Pippo Franco on his absurd debut album “Cara Kiri” from 1971, the album of “Cesso” with lyrics by the exceptional Gigi Proietti, worth listening to.

But let’s not digress: here’s the fifteenth album by Nazareth (1984). The acclaimed firm holds its ground in the eighties, bends to the commercial and sonic demands of the time, but doesn’t break. Among sequences of synthesizer and electronic booms and splashes, the familiar rough, proletarian voice of McCafferty makes its way, a true alien body compared to the plastic and dance-like trends surrounding it.

Among the episodes I like stands out “Moondance” (which is not the one by Van Morrison): nice chords in the refrain, round electric arpeggios. It doesn’t blaze, but it burns slowly and warms the soul. And then the Celtic bagpipe that even recruits the guitar in its coils, leading the homemade (i.e., Scottish) ballad “Love of Freedom” all the way to the finale, which, however, fades too soon, just when everything was heading towards a touching and sonorous catharsis.

The other original compositions are all more or less disco rock, melodically appreciable (few but evident lines easy to memorize) but rhythmically unfortunate, capable of draining the excellent rock warmth that this group has almost always been able to put into its simple, yet sincere music.

The work also takes refuge in a couple of covers, which however are not great. The noble “Ruby Tuesday” by the Stones, sped up and converted into melodic dance, is unbearable; they even change some chords... sacrilege! A better treatment is reserved for the originally psychedelic (very Jefferson Airplane, I’d say) “Road to Nowhere” by the vintage Carole King from 1966: distorted yes, but with robust rock veins and adequate hefty guitars to soften the rhythmic rigidity of the disco drone that sustains it.

The mature Nazareth stagger but don’t give up, in this instance aspiring to be cool but not too soft. What motivates them, given that the multitudes mostly follow other, fresher idols? Ah, if only we knew! In fact, they will stop later, going back to making hard rock more aggressive than ever. But for now, it’s early, and one has to settle for this work that looks right, left, above and below, chasing its time without managing to ride it.