I'll admit I'm sort of a sucker for this era of soft rock. It likely explains why I'm such a big fan of Christopher Cross ... no I am not kidding. Before Mister Cross though there were others - one of whom was Stephen Bishop. A year earlier he had contributed a couple of songs to Art Garfunkel's 1975 album
Breakaway, and this helped him secure a record deal.
Careless would feature some of the best players of the '70s: Andrew Gold, Jay Graydon, Larry Carlton and Eric Clapton played guitar, Russ Kunkel and Jim Gordon among others on drums, and Chaka Khan who was also on ABC records appeared as a backing vocalist on a couple of track. Art Garfunkel also appeared on a few tracks.
For a debut this is pretty awesome. Stephen co-produced the album with Henry Lewy who also engineered the album. Lewy was no stranger to great sounding albums which included Mitchell's Blue and Neil Young's Harvest.
The album opens with Stephen Bishop's biggest hit - or at least to me the song I associate with him, "On ans On" and frankly this was why I bought the album. I really didn't know if the rest would just be filler but thankfully the whole album was chock full of tightly crafted pop songs. Despite the heavy hitters on guitar, there aren't many guitar solos here. "Save it for a Rainy Day" is the closest where Eric Clapton unleashes a wicked riff that feels like the start of something really tasty but suddenly stops as if to say, "Just kidding." It actually works, but I still think it would have worked gooder if Eric had cut loose.
Speaking of guitar, Stephen plays the acoustic guitar on all of the tracks and it is front and centre in the mix. He is a really tasteful player. Heck, he even manages to pull off a trombone solo on the title track. However, I'd put money (not a lot, I am notoriously cheap) that it isn't a trombone at all - it's Mister Bishop doing an impression of a trombone. It's awesome, and yes, it does sound like a trombone.*
Careless is one of those albums that caught me by surprise. I knew there was one good song, and hoped the rest was good too, but you can never tell. Of all the songs the one that punched above its weight was the album's closing track "The Same Old Tears On a New Background". It was recorded live (likely a board recording, as there is no audience or ambient noise) and it is just Stephen and his guitar and the song is mesmerizing. There are moments where he seems to evoke elements of Paul Simon, but it is so good and when the song finishes with the harmonics on the 12th fret (I'm guessing he was capoed at the first) it was a perfect finishing touch that wrapped up the entire album. I'm hoping that was deliberate, as the sequencing of the songs on the album felt deliberate.
Stephen Bishop didn't release many albums so I'm hoping it won't be too hard to find the other two albums that followed this one.**
I know I got a little gushy, but dagnabbit it caught me on a good day ... days actually, as I'd been playing this off and on for about a week before I decided to sit down to do a brain dump. Of course if you don't like this style of music I suspect this will be just a batch of rather nondescript soft rock songs that are as annoying as they are boring.
Your loss. These were deliberate, not ... careless.
* Ah, looking closely there was a hairline dash that spells "tromblone" it's very subtle. When I was listening to Bish, the album starts with an instrumental version of "If I Only Has a Brain" and there in the credits is says very clearly TROMBLONE. Mystery solved, and it makes me appreciate Mister Bishop even more. That is seriously funny and awesome.
** I had finished this wee blurb and it was scheduled to post and I was out the other day and found them both buried in the same bins I found Careless in, ah serendipity.
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