Our In-Stores feature is on hiatus and will return soon. —Ed.
Many millions are familiar with the Left Banke’s achievements without knowing them by name. Those who do recognize the moniker surely know why: “Walk Away Renée,” a big baroque pop hit and oldies station rotation chestnut, if ever one existed. While the band’s success is far from limited to that single, until now only diehard fans have been hip to their third album Strangers on a Train, which features tracks recorded in 1978 but not released until 1986. Omnivore Recordings has just reissued its ten songs on CD with an additional six demos recorded in 2001 by members Michael Brown and Steve Martin Caro, the sessions combining into a wildly inconsistent yet intriguingly unexpected whole.
In full-length album terms, the Left Banke’s discography is not vast. They cut two LPs in the 1960s, Walk Away Renée/Pretty Ballerina (’66), which holds their three Hot 100 singles, and The Left Banke Too (’67), recorded without Brown and not a commercial success. Released on CD in 1992, There’s Gonna Be a Storm: The Complete Recordings 1966–1969 combines these albums and adds two non-LP singles plus an unreleased track.
The band’s “classic” lineup featured keyboardist and songwriter Brown, lead vocalist Caro, bassist-backing vocalist Tom Finn, and drummer George Cameron; all four are heard on this reissue, but not all together. All four have also passed, sadly. The ten tracks that comprise Strangers on a Train, released as Voices Calling in Europe with a different sequence (the Euro order repeated by Omnivore here), reportedly began with Brown briefly on board but exiting early in the process, leaving Caro, Cameron, and Finn.
They were assembled not to record a Left Banke album, but to assist Finn in his new publishing deal, with nine of the tracks crediting Finn as either sole writer or co-writer. This is borne out by the results, which frankly sound nothing like either the baroque pop that largely defines the Left Banke’s debut LP, or the decidedly more sunshine-mainstream pop of its Brown-less follow-up.
The resistance to crafting an inferior retread of the Left Banke’s glories would be admirable if it weren’t so obvious that Finn and his bandmates were unashamedly striving to harness and exploit the essence of the late ’70s pop-rock airwaves, with a dose of disco thrown in, even; the sessions sole cover is “Queen of Paradise,” written by New Zealander Shade Smith.
This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, except that Finn simply isn’t a writer of Brown’s caliber. Strangers on a Train’s nadir is the middle-of-the-road balladry of “Lorraine,” which Finn composed all by his lonesome, though to be fair, he also wrote the power pop of “Hold On Tight” by himself. It and “Yesterday’s Love” are the highpoints from the Stranger on a Train session, though the Wings-like “Only My Opinion” ain’t bad, either.
But these songs stick out like achy thumbs in the steady stream of largely uninspired pop gestures, with Caro’s pipes the focal point. Amid all this, the craven disco pop of “Queen of Paradise” is downright preferable. That song’s release as a single likely perplexed (or possibly infuriated) the few Left Banke fans who bought it.
It might seem odd that a half dozen demos from the 21st century are this collection’s sustained highlight, but after listening and pondering, it’s not that unusual, as the Left Banke’s reliable strong points were Brown’s writing (and keyboards) in tandem with Caro’s voice. Well, together with chamber strings, which are abundant here, right away in the sweeping “Airborne” and helping to secure the consecutive tracks “Until the End” and “My Buddy Steve (Long Lost Friend)” as the disc’s overall best.
Emotionalism is a prerequisite in baroque pop, but it’s rarely executed with as much sincerity as during Strangers on a Train’s concluding six tracks. They insinuate that a 21st century Left Banke album could’ve proven an odds-defying success, but alas, it was not to be.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B
