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Rating:
After a wait of four years, the album was released in 2001, the Prefab Sprout are back.
The novelties are essentially two: the group has practically halved, leaving only the "bandleader" Paddy with his bassist brother Martin, and Paddy McAloon has transformed into an unarmed and disarming cowboy.
Honestly, how many others could have, without inciting a certain hilarity, donned the guise of a frontier sheriff, drawn from the aesthetics and epic of the western, and titled the album "The Gunman and Other Stories"? He, with a credibility that has few equals in the increasingly plastic world of pop, did it, and the results of the operation satisfy and sadden at the same time.
They satisfy for the usual quality of the compositions.
Paddy, like other great artists, seeks to improve, perfecting and reworking what, in the eyes of many, might appear to be essentially the same work. With his total and anachronistic dedication to the cause, the realization of a personal idea of pop, faithful to his seemingly naive aesthetic principles, he has managed, once again, to create a handful of timeless songs, minor masterpieces, certainly not up to his best but which will still make his fans happy.
Undoubtedly positive is the contribution of a famous producer like Tony Visconti, already the deus ex machina, among others, of some works of the "White Duke".
Among the ten tracks that make up the album, at least the bucolic "Cowboy Dream" (is it just a coincidence the presence of the banjo as in the Travis single "Sing"?); the bitter and painful "Trouble Man" ("please, forgive me, if you can / girl, you know that I'm trouble man"); the prolonged emotion, in the splendor of cinemascope, of "Gunman" should be mentioned.
They sadden because of the suspicion that his, (our...) might be one of those "duels" lost from the start: the shiny and harmless guns of Sheriff McAloon I fear this time will not hit the target neither among the general public, for whom it might be too sophisticated, nor among some old fans who might find it repetitive.
Sure, seeing McAloon on the cover with a graying beard, a bit flabby like a protagonist of a twilight western, had a certain effect on me. It was, in some ways, like looking in the mirror, like suddenly realizing the years that have passed (the masterpiece "Steve McQueen" is from '85!). Oh yes, having a youthful spirit, like Paddy's, unfortunately doesn't shield you from the inexorable marks of time, especially when you have to support, at the same time, the astonishing exploits of Don Quixote and the tasks as prosaic as indispensable of Sancho Panza ("Lord, you know that I'm trouble man").
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
06 Cornfield Ablaze (04:48)
I saw you from the tractor
The harvest had begun
You were the lovechild of two gods
I was the farmer's awkward son
You left Mount Olympus
To find your soul mate
I left a scribbled note, quote:
"Dear Pa, this year harvest can wait."
You took the match to my dry August days
Cornfield ablaze! Cornfield ablaze!
Flames licked the sky, that was some summer haze
Cornfield ablaze! Cornfield ablaze!
How do I love you? Let me count the ways...
Cornfield ablaze!
Pa, don't be angry
The fields that were host
To the corn and the wheat:
The fact is they're toast!
In self-defence I'm obligued to point out
There'll always be a risk of combustion
When there's been a drought
You took the match to my dry August days
Cornfield ablaze! Cornfield ablaze!
Flames licked the sky, that was some summer haze
Cornfield ablaze! Cornfield ablaze!
How do I love you? Let me count the ways...
Cornfield ablaze!
Imagine if the firemen worked and worked for days
And still the cornfields stayed ablaze...
Her hair it was golden
Her hair it was yarn
We were playing with fire
In the number one barn
Carried away like
Two sparks on a breeze
Then we fused into one
At a thousand degrees
You overwhelmed agricultural man
Cornfield ablaze! Cornfield ablaze!
You wild pyromaniac daughter of Pan
Cornfield ablaze! Cornfield ablaze!
You took a scarecrow and made him a man...
Cornfield ablaze!
Cornfield ablaze!
Cornfield ablaze!
Cornfield ablaze!
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