Steve Wynn
Dazzling Display

Here I am, or rather here we are, once again in the realm of Steve Wynn and his solo career.

This time, there are two of us; I have shared the writing of the review with one of the best pens to have joined the site in recent months. We’re talking about Almotasin, to whom goes my heartfelt thanks for accepting my proposal.

INTRO

From the unparalleled Acid-Rock alchemy of the “Days of Wine and Roses,” where with the Dream Syndicate he fused and transcended the sounds of the Velvet Underground, Stooges, Doors, and Television with an edginess that felt prickly up to the arteries, here we are at solo Steve Wynn: now solidified on the path of Rock songwriting, with Dylan, minstrel and prophet, and Reed, ungainly bard on the brink of an abyss, as his guardian deities.
After the excellent kerosene outpouring of the debut effort, although some point to the underrated “Ghost Stories” as his first personal work, Wynn tackles “Dazzling Display,” which in some ways aims to emulate the good compositional vein that emerged right in the debut. Attempts at “replication” that will no longer appear in his subsequent career, instead, venturing each time into different idioms: an increased intimacy (“Fluorescent”), a renewed Garage-Rock vocation (“Melting In The Dark”), a nod to the sixties in vocal and sound blends (“Sweetness and Light”), up to the surprising and heterogeneous, as well as highly inspired, 2001 double album with Paisley features (“Here Comes The Miracles”).

THE ALBUM

Unfortunately, this is the least successful work of Steve's entire enormous career; an unexpected misstep after the excellent solo debut a couple of years earlier. “Dazzling Display” misses the mark in almost all tracks, aside from a few rare exceptions; Steve's intention was very ambitious, perhaps too ambitious: the decisive leap forward, musically and also in terms of sales. Instead, it marks a backward step that, fortunately for us, will remain a single episode. There's too much going on in the album, starting with the cover made of a thousand images and a thousand colors; then comes the music, and it's even worse. Wynn's sparse and minimalist poetic style, overloaded by a lush and pompous production, suffers greatly from an artificial and superfluous prolixity, which deprives it of the immediacy and stripped beauty that can, on the contrary, strike at the heart. Horn and string sections weigh down the textures, and even the marginalized and disenfranchised Los Angelinos, protagonists of his pieces, are portrayed cumbersomely with such refined and artificial tones. The ever-present studio refinements carried out during the long recording sessions are also heavy; Steve had accustomed us with the Dream Syndicate to almost live recordings: the first take is good and on to a new track. Speed and concreteness are missing in “Dazzling Display.” I have always loved and appreciated that sound so minimal, so sincere made only and solely of guitar (that guitar that spit fire and flames in the glorious days of wine and roses), bass, and drums. Not forgetting the voice, that voice so recognizable and grateful of Steve.

SONGS

“Tuesday,” with Peter Buck on the twelve-string, is cheerful and poppy, with some Soul-like backing vocals, a fragile ray of sunshine finished with violin and harmonica sobs. It seems like listening to Lloyd Cole and his sensational Commotions. “Bonnie & Clyde” is a translation from Gainsbourg: Johnette Napolitano is very sensual in the duet, matches the game with Brigitte Bardot, but Steve doesn’t have Serge’s magnetism and emphasis: the track's depth is really too weak and doesn’t hold up against the original masterpiece. Then there isn't much else to remember, starting with the opening entrusted to “Drag”: the track begins promisingly, with the electric grating, but it immediately gets lost among excessive sounds and arrangements. Too many instruments enter into the context of the song during its runtime: tenor sax, baritone sax, trumpet, and trombone. Even a completely out-of-context sitar makes a poor appearance. In the track credits, there are no less than twelve musicians, including instrumentalists and choristers, engaged in giving their heartfelt (too heartfelt I dare to add) contribution to the awful final result. And it’s not over because in the slow and nocturnal “Halo” the gypsy sound of a violin is emphasized towards the end: no, come on this is too much dear Steve!!

FINAL THOUGHTS

The desire to tackle this record quickly fades. With the Paisley Underground and the more authentic Wynn, it hardly does. After this decisive, and somewhat painful, critique, what rating do we give the album? But in the end, the unconditional love we have for the boy from the City of Angels comes to light; and so the three stars, the barely passing grade, are somehow mandatory.

Ad Maiora.