Hall and Oates - Private Eyes

Private Eyes (1981) ****

Topping the charts with their blue-eyed state-of-the-'80s soul style with the previous year's Voices, on the followup Oates & Hall perfect that style with even more artistic and commercial success.  The title track may work a similar piano-pop new wave vein as "Kiss On My List," but it's arguably even catchier, adding a naggingly sleek guitar hook to the bounce.  And in contrast to Voices, the material is much more consistent, with no real low points:  Oates' "Mano a Mano," may be cheese but it's winsomely likeable cheese, and the closer "Some Men," may be a slightly irritating rocker, but only slightly, and those two songs are really as bad as it gets, which is to say not bad at all.  "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)," was the other #1 hit, and since I was still in the first grade in 1981 I have no idea whether that song coined the annoying catchphrase or merely copped it.  Either way, it's slick mainstream R&B that's the rare bird that gives slick mainstream R&B a good name, with its slow silky-grind funk groove and insinuating chorus.  It's easy to see why H&O had the knack for hitting the charts with every single, as they not only know their way around a hook but understand the importance of a solid chorus that falls on the right line between oversubtle and overbearing, memorable but not hitting-the-head-with-a-mallet so, as too much Top 40 pop does.  Geniuses they are not, but there's a little too much of the ineffable magic fairy dust that's sprinkled over the most transcendent pop to claim that they're mere craftsmen.  Hall has a bright but shallow but undeniable talent; let's call him a lightweight mini-genius and be done with it, agreed?

The brightly shining synthesizer hook of "Did It In a Minute," scored the boys another hit, a considerably smaller one than the two #1's, and it's one of those rock solid products of sheer pop craftsmanship where every song sounds like a potential single.  The album sticks closer to the pop-soul than pop-rock side of the duo for the most, though Oates' "Friday Let Me Down," is a ringingly soaring slice of pure power-pop that wouldn't sound out of place on a Shoes or Knack album.  Nearly every song has some sort of winning combo of hookcraft and melodic insinuation to emerge forth on the right side of a pleasure.  They may not have made another album before or since quite as consistent (some swear by their '70s albums, but those are all too hit-and-miss in comparison), but for once they really delivered the goods with a record that's as entertaining as mainstream '80s pop gets.  That's a recommendation, BTW.  Not a super-strong recommendation, since I only gave it four not five stars.  Let's face it, mainstream '80s pop by definition has an artistic glass ceiling. 

Hall and Oates - Voices

Voices (1980) ***1/2

If you can stomach past the sight of John Oates in tight purple pants, a wifebeater, and a porn star 'stache, what you get is an excellent mainstream pop album circa 1980 with mild new wave, R&B, adult contemporary, and power pop tendencies; each only in equal measure a mild tendency, because aiming for the charts means aiming for the widest possible audience means MOR.  Kids today may have forgotten (because they weren't even born until at least a decade later), but anyone over 30 remembers H&O as the most successful musical duo ever, dominating the airwaves with a string of hit albums and singles during the first half of the '80s.  Forget Wacko Jacko, he had one album that ruled radio for one year in the '80s, these guys had at least four albums in a row that rocked MTV and FM for five freakin' years (don't mention AM, no one but truckers used that format since 1975).  So they're also one of the most widely reviled musical acts in history, as is always the case with the overplayed.  The '80s have a lot to answer for, and only widespread snorting of Bolivian marching powder can possibly explain that cover, easily the most cringeably embarrassing in my CD collection. 

But even if you have to hide this CD far out of sight from any potential guests, the CD itself will likely gain timespace in your player.  Containing not one but two but three massive hits, plus a fourth massive megahit under someone else's cover, this longplayer set off the deluge of Oatesmania and Hallophilia.  "Kiss On My List," was the biggest one, co-written by Daryl with his long-time girlfriend, and its bouncy piano tinkle-tankle is an infectious as anything contempo by Joe Jackson or Squeeze.  "You Make My Dreams Come True," was a fine followup in similar-but-a-shade-less-catchy-vein; "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling," a choice cover aimed bullseye at the charts; and the ballad "Everytime You Go Away," works well in its understated original form here.  From there on we get a mixed bag of worthy-to-eh album tracks.  Oates' opener, "How Does It Feel To Be Back," and "Hard To Be In Love With You," could have been potential fourth and fifth singles if it had been regular practice to issue that many off an album in 1980 (it wasn't; three at the most was standard industry practice back then - it was Thriller that upped the stakes by releasing five or six hit singles off the same album, changing everything).  The mild rocker "Big Kids," (it's impossible to imagine these dudes rocking out more than mildly, isn't it?) even offers a bit of mild political commentary, pointing out that the world's leaders are all just big kids like all adults.  An answer song to Gang of Four's "Not Great Men," hmm?  OK, most definitively likely definitely not, but you never know.  After all, we're dealing with a guy who cut an album with Robert Fripp.  The final two tracks are throwaway goofs, with Oates' goofball "Africa," the nadir, and "Diddy Doo Wop (I Hear Voices)" an uncharming doo-wop pastiche.  "United State," overdoes the Costello-esque metaphorical wordplay in a misguided attempted to be clever, but musically is just fine, and "Gotta a Lotta Nerve (Perfect Perfect)" is a mildly irrating rocker as you might have guessed from scanning the title.  Mildly irritating, mildly rocking, mildly clever, but SUPREMO catchy, dig?  That is this album.  Now that the 1980s are long, long over and we have some safe distance between us and that horrid decade, such an album can be appreciated for the high quality, glossily cotton candy divertismo it never sold itself as anything but.