Nick Gilder - City Nights

City Nights was Nick's second solo album, and for most of us it's "Hot Child in the City" that he's best known for ... as a solo artist. He's still somewhat infamous as the guy who left Sweeney Todd just as they were taking off ... but for many years now he's been touring as Sweeney Todd so I guess he ended up having the last laugh anyway.

Regardless, there's no denying how good "Hot Child in the City" was ... it was huge on both sides of the border, and Nick's balancing of the glam elements mixed with rock and emerging new wave was pretty impressive. A big part of this was the songwriting team of James McCulloch and Nick Gilder. When Nick left Sweeney Todd, it was with guitarist and songwriter James, and if Nick had a secret sauce it was James' both as a writer, and more impressively - a really tasty and economical player.

The album was produced by Peter Coleman, and Mike Chapman. Both had deep roots with power pop and glam. Mike Chapman is the name I'm more familiar with, but looking through Peter's credits is equally impressive. It was Mike who produced "Hot Child in the City" and a couple of others with Peter handling the chores on the rest of the album. It's a remarkably cohesive album. The rhythm section was Craig Krampf on drums and Eric Nelson on drums and they really anchor the album. 

Now, I have to admit this was an album I'd not heard before. I did have the follow up to this one, Frequency, a mostly forgettable album that had one spectacular song on it ... but in fairness, it was years after it was released when I got it, so I never really spent time with it.

Listening to City Nights now is sort of bittersweet in that this is the kind of music I really liked. It's not like I had a huge budget to buy records back then as my collection was pretty thin, but I sure did like listening to the radio, and for whatever reason I was actively ambivalent to "Hot Child in the City" mainly because some of the mean girls liked it ... and they were, well, mean and therefore anything they liked was tainted.

Ick.

So here we are, decades after the fact rocking out in the basement and having a grand old time. I can't say this is timeless, but it sure does hold up. The riffs are huge, and the production is so clean while maintaining an edge. Then there's Nick's voice. It's kind of a love it, or really, really, really hate it kind on things. I don't think there's much of a middle ground. 

My favourite review is featured prominently on Nick's wiki page for the album and comes from the Globe and Mail in 1978:

"'Hot Child in the City', which appears on this album, sums up most of what he has to offer—titillating lyrics, simple, formula melodies, derivative zooming guitars and percussive rhythms so basic they verge on the moronic."

Ouch, show me on the doll where the bad man touched you while making you listen to this one.

The other way of looking at this is that while "Hot Child in the City" was the big song on the album, it's indicative of what you can expect from the rest of the songs on the record. Zooming guitars, and percussive rhythms that pay homage to the golden era of glam while looking forward at the same time. There's nothing overly complicated here, just good old rock and roll.

This is really an enjoyable album all the way through, and while not necessarily moronic, the songs are honestly largely forgettable aside from the one song where it all came together. Which may also be due to familiarity and a few decades of nostalgia ... so hearing the "new" songs a few times will hardly have the same impact as a song that I've known since I was a teenager.

So I can forgive a bit of object permanence with respect to how well the songs stick with me after hearing them. While this is playing all I can think about is how much fun these songs are. Isn't that enough.

Yes, yes it is. 

When I think of City Nights my impression is, "What a great album." 

What more do you want?