Walk On

by

John Hiatt

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If you're a fan of modern "roots" music - quality guitar-based music with at least a hint of blues, folk, country, or rock (or a combo in many cases) - you've got get this. And let it grow on you. And grow. And grow. It will!

Walk On is an incredible journey of haunting lyrics & moods, symbolism, nature, stories, humor, and wit. All songs have at least one of these themes, and several could cross into more than one of the themes. Lyrically, it is very poetic - just the words with no music could be published into a book of poetry!

There are fast and slow, accoustic & electric - even a few rockers! Some of my favorites (and my own interpretations) include: The title track - an absolutely hauntingly moody sound, about regrets; "As Good As She Could Be," a rocker with a message that wealth can't buy happiness; "Dust Down a Country Road," about Second Thoughts; and "Shredding the Document," a sarcastic rocker that would appear to mirror some of Hiatt's own contract dealings with the business side of music-making!

That's four faves, but I would not hit the skip button on a single song here. Buy it and come up with four faves of your own!

He might not exactly be a visionary, but Hiatt's ability to rock you out of the galaxy one minute and grind you to tears the next is a talent reserved for too few artists. Yet it is even more remarkable that the quality of Hiatt's work varies so widely when the basic formula never changes. "Walk On" is one of his most overt examples of this strange circumstance. Despite the same Americana stew Hiatt cooks up with every release (mandolin, banjo, harmonica, lap-steel, wurlitzer, you know the drill) a kind of hollowness hovers over these songs that betrays the resonance and power of more distinctive releases (Think "Crossing Muddy Waters" or "Bring the Family"). Every once in a while Hiatt just can't help but overproduce, cramming everything all at once into a single song. The result is like biting into some over-marinated barbeque: too many flavors making for a bland and mildly bitter aftertaste. Less has always been more for Hiatt, whose ocassional attempts at wider appeal yield more clutter than clarity. Such is the case here on overblown freak-outs such as "Ethylene," "Good As She Can Be" or the downright droll "I Can't Wait," a song whose jarringly high-pitched vocals are just so bad as to sound like Prince on 'roids. These tutorials in excess are transformed into even more glaring failures by the comparatively understated and all-the-more powerful "Walk on," "Native Son" and the wildly intriguing "Wrote It Down And Burned It," a song that anticipates the engaging atmospherics of his more recent masterpiece, "The Tiki Bar is Open." Similarly, the raw, piano-driven eulogy, "Friend of Mine" is even more poignant a testament to Hiatt's powers than "Have A Little Faith in Me." But the album isn't just a mixed-bag musically; the lyrics, too, often leave just as little to the imagination. Why, I wonder, do we need to know that John is "sittin' on the toilet" with his "sunglasses on" at the onset of "Ethylene"? Maybe I'm alone in this, but a vision of John Hiatt squatting on the old pot is something I can most assuredly do without. And I doubt lines like "Ethylene, oh Ethylene, my love for you is just obscene" are going to change the minds of many skeptics. But, as always with Hiatt, the gems here are just too good to pass up, and are well worth the price on their own.