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By STEVE MASCORD
WHILE JIMMY Barnes was a critical hit with 1988’s Freight Train Heart, back home in Oz he was lampooned in some quarters for selling out. Aussies don’t like seeing their folk heroes record albums in America and use the likes of Huey Lewis and David Glenn Eisley, you see…
Warning: this is not a metal album. This is not a hard rock album. This is not a blues album. This is not a soul album. It’s… er… well, just very, very good.
Unlike the overtly slick, anthemic and compelling Freight Train Heart, there’s no grand vision pervading Two Fires.
Sure, there’s Jimmy bellowing over the best American schlockdom has to offer, but there’s also some accomplished rockabilly, stadium rock, blues and even a metailic stormer called “Hard Line”.
First Atlantic single “Make It Last All Night” is a Desmond Child/Dianne Warren/Jimmy special, built on a keyboard refrain reminiscent of a thousand Bon Jovi tear-jerkers, complete with the obligatory ‘nah-nah-nah-wah’s. Similarly, “‘When Your Love Is Gone” moseys along atop a clinically-correct drum machine, while “One Of Kind” boasts a pansy-level impotency when it comes to the chorus – all smug cleverness and stylistic phrasing.
So why isn’t this a Michael Bolton record? Simple. The Voice, The guttural, barbaric yowl that has made Jimmy Barnes a bigger domestic property Down Under than INXS or AC/DC. The most interesting songs on this 11-track platter are those where the arrangements are trained, perfect American… then Jimmy blows the whole thing to somewhere west of Wangaratta with explosive, sweaty passion.
The rest of the record is made up of sassy blues and soul-roc, but first Aussie single “Lay Down Your Guns” is an insidiously infectious example of neither. “Little Darling” may be low-strung blues rock and “Caught Between Two Fires’ may be corporate stadia fodder, but it’s not even noticeable. They’re just vehicles for the Scottish Panzer division voicebox from Hell.
With a new record company and the right choice of singles, Jimmy might just please a whole lot of new people who have no idea where Bowral, Wangaratta or Wooloomooloo are.
This review first appeared in Kerrang! on September 1, 1990
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