Not So Much to Be Loved As to Love Review

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Not So Much to Be Loved As to Love ReviewEternally boyish Boston-born troubadour Jonathan Richman has passed through a number of phases in his 30-plus years of writing and performing: Lonely and alienated adolescent (in the early 1970's with his garage-rock outfit the Modern Lovers); childlike regression during the latter half of the '70s; sweetly goofy family-man (early 1980's to mid-'90s). Since his move to the Vapor label in the mid-90's, he has become an endearing alternative-pop cult figure, beloved for his willfully innocent yet honest chronicles of modern love and life.
Jonathan's previous effort, 2001's Her Mystery Not Of High Heels And Eye Shadow, rarely strayed from the topic of love, and was considered too slight by some critics (including myself, as much as I enjoyed it). However, his latest, Not So Much To Be Loved As To Love, is quite possibly one of his most satisfying efforts. Being the first record he has produced entirely by himself, he seems to have settled on a sound that suits him perfectly -- this is one of the clearest, cleanest-sounding rock records I've heard in a long time, and he has his best backing ever with bassist Greg "Curly" Keranen (who first performed with Richman in the mid-'70s) and drummer/loyal touring partner Tommy Larkins, as well as with hints of brass, woodwinds and accordion.
What also makes Not So Much... particularly satisfying is both the strength and diversity of the material. My favorite track, the jaunty "The World is Showing Its Hand", is an excellent example of how Jonathan takes unironic delight in life's simplest pleasures -- in this case, taking in the smells of the various things around him ("Gimme a mowed lawn, gimme ozone, gimme summer rain / Let me smell more of the world, then I might learn something"). The jangly "He Gave Us the Wine to Taste It" is another instant classic; taken on one level, it could be just about an unusual wine-tasting, but really, it's more about simply enjoying the good things in life without having to pick them apart and analyze them too much. The title cut carries on the same basic theme of "Affection" -- the haunting ballad he originally cut in 1979 and revisited in '98 -- but this time with a catchy mid-tempo groove and gently humorous musings like "I was waitin' for affection, but I was looking in the wrong direction / What I needed was not so much to be loved as to love." (The thematic similarity to "Affection" is further underscored by the stripped-down ballad version of "Not So Much..." offered as the #15 hidden track.)
"My Baby Love Love Loves Me," which originally appeared last year on Richman's Take Me To The Plaza concert DVD, is a bouncy, typical-JR love song that would have sounded right at home on Her Mystery...; so would've the lovely, picturesque (but too-short) instrumental "Sunday Afternoon". The two songs about painters couldn't be more different: "Vincent Van Gogh" is a rollicking re-working of a tune he first recorded on 1985's long out-of-print Rockin' And Romance LP; "Salvador Dali" may lack the stick-in-your-brain hooks of "VVG" ("he loved color and he let it show"), or even the early Modern Lovers track "Pablo Picasso" (...), but its haunting melody, and its theme of looking to art to find a cure for your blues, make it a worthy addition to his songbook. In the tradition of the 4 Spanish tracks he recorded for his previous record, here Richman includes 2 highly rocking tracks that he wrote and sang in Italian ("Cosi Veloce", "In Che Mondo Viviamo"), as well as 2 French numbers (the upbeat "Les Etoiles", the languid "On a Du Soleil"). Most startling is the unusually topical "Abu Jamal", a simple yet powerful protest song.
Bottom line: I'm not sure I would recommend picking up this eclectic and often serious effort as your very first JR record, but I admire it a great deal and I strongly recommend it to anyone who is already into his stuff.Not So Much to Be Loved As to Love Overview

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