Rating:
Genre:
Rock
Release Date: 10/02/2007
Not long after the 2004 release of his fifth solo album,
Deja Vu All Over Again,
John Fogerty parted ways with
DreamWorks -- but perhaps a more important label development for the singer/songwriter was that his old home
Fantasy Records, the place where he cut all his classic
Creedence Clearwater Revival albums, was sold to
Concord Records. He had a longstanding feud with
Fantasy and its head,
Saul Zaentz, but
Concord sought to make amends with
Fogerty, quickly signing him to the label. Just as rapidly,
Fogerty finally embraced his
CCR material, beginning to play it in concert and releasing a compilation called
The Long Road Home, which blended his
Creedence hits with solo cuts, a welcome return for all involved -- so welcome that
Fogerty continued to push this re-acceptance of
Creedence on his 2007 follow-up to
Deja Vu,
Revival. Its very title, of course, echoes
CCR -- while its cover echoes
Blue Ridge Rangers and his eponymous debut -- and
Fogerty goes out of his way to stoke those comparisons by writing
"Creedence Song," but it's possible to oversell this return to the fold as a massive shift in sound and aesthetic, when it's really an imperceptible change, at least in terms of pure sound.
Fogerty may have shunned
Creedence, but that is only in terms of songs: he never ran away from the sound. After all, this is a guy who was sued for plagiarizing himself -- sure, it was a frivolous suit, but it's a pretty good indication that his solo work sounded a lot like his classic stuff. So, anybody expecting
Revival to be a big shift in direction will be disappointed, because it has a similar feel to any of his other records, along with a very relaxed vibe, not dissimilar to anything he's done after
Eye of the Zombie.
Even if the acceptance of
Creedence hasn't made much of a difference in terms of sound, it does have an effect on
Fogerty as a writer, as he attempts to recapture the vibe of his '60s stuff, tapping into the charged political vibe of
"Fortunate Son" and
"Who'll Stop the Rain" in particular.
Revival spills over with topical songs, both metaphorical (
"Gunslinger") and thuddingly literal (
"Long Dark Night," where
George W.,
Rummy, and
Dick Cheney are all called out by name). Sometimes
Fogerty's missives lack grace -- impassioned though it is, the name-calling in
"Long Dark Night" is clumsy -- but there's a real fire to his writing here, turning
Revival into a missive as immediate, effective, and telling as Neil Young's
Living with War. Like that album, it does feel like the work of an old pro, in how the music is lived-in and simple. Sometimes, this can veer into something that's just this side of stodgy --
"Don't You Wish It Was True" sounds like something to be played while swinging on the front porch -- and there's a crankiness that runs through this record that's kind of ingratiating.
Fogerty is longing for the past here -- crooning like
Merle Haggard when he wondered if the good times were really over -- but this isn't a new wrinkle;
Fogerty has always been nostalgic. When he was a young man, he romanticized America's past, creating a world that likely didn't exist, but his visions were all the more alluring because of their fantasy. Perhaps it was inevitable that as he aged, he'd turn to romanticizing his own past, yet it's still odd to hear him embracing the
"Summer of Love" when he never, ever was part of the scene in San Francisco; knowing this, it kind of gives away the artifice behind his creation. Still, artifice can be a crucial part of art, and
Fogerty is an uncannily sharp musician in how he can mold the past to fit his own world, which he does with
"Summer of Love," turning it into a fuzz-toned choogle with a sly paraphrase of
"Sunshine of Your Love." This is also true on
"Creedence Song," which is far from self-aggrandizing -- it's wryly funny and crackling with musical allusions to
CCR songs, some so sly they pass by without notice. This is
Revival at its most fun, but even if the world-weariness drags down some of the rest of the album, this is nevertheless his strongest album in years, standing proudly against
Centerfield as one of his best. Which may be the reason that
Fogerty and
Fantasy are playing the
Creedence card so hard: it will hook listeners into an album that they know won't disappoint.
~Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
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