Bruce Hornsby’s new, reflective album begins off sweetly and melodically, a musician trying again at an enchanting life. Then it will get bizarre. That’s by design.
“I’m going along very nicely and then I might just throw something at you,” the three-time Grammy Award-winner warns from his dwelling in Williamsburg, Virginia. “I’m well aware that a whole lot of my old-time fans just hate that.”
“Indigo Park,” a 10-song set that arrived Friday, is an idea album of kinds as Hornsby mulls over his childhood and the place he is come from. To borrow a line from one track, it is “one life in reflection.”
The album — which options appearances from Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, Bonnie Raitt and Bob Weir, his late Grateful Dead bandmate — is a darkly comedian assortment that handles recollections with soulfulness — and a few quirks.
Hornsby, who got here out of the gates swinging with the socially aware hit “The Way It Is” in 1986, is aware of which songs could journey up the typical listener as of late — Nos. 3, 6 and 9, which might be “Entropy Here (Rust in Peace),” “Alabama” and “Might As Well Be Me, Florinda.” They’re, in a phrase, difficult, with dissonant and sophisticated time signatures.
“Look, I love simple music. There’s simple songs on this,” he says. “But I also love complexity. And I’m interested sometimes in making a sound I haven’t heard before.”
“Indigo Park” captures Hornsby’s stressed musical creativity and love of language. Not many pop albums as of late causally drop the phrases “priapic” or “tumescent” or make reference to math’s Fibonacci sequence.
“This is just a window into my goofy world,” he says, explaining that the Hornsby family loves humorous phrases and a little bit of wordplay, with perhaps dad telling considered one of his sons he’s trying “a bit concupiscent, pal.”
Hornsby calls himself an “inveterate reader” and lots of of his songs have been impressed by literary fiction, like 2019’s “White Noise” which was a nod to David Foster Wallace’s novel “The Pale King.” “I guess you could really just call me, simply in one word, a snob.”
On one new track, “Silhouette Shadows,” Hornsby references studying concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy over the college intercom. He was a 3rd grader in a small, conservative Southern city, and all of the sudden, his classmates began celebrating, hoping Richard Nixon would possibly take over.
“I was really alarmed and confused/Watching the children parroting parent’s views,” Hornsby sings. “Ancient scenes and cryptic dreams.”
The track’s music was impressed by a fugue by classical composer Dmitri Shostakovich that he had written for a Spike Lee challenge, however the filmmaker by no means used it. So Hornsby took it again: “That was me trying to make a sound I hadn’t heard before.”
Another track — “Ecstatic,” which options Bonnie Raitt on vocals — feels like light-hearted playground banter, and it form of is. It comes from the basketball chants Hornsby heard from mother and father as his older son, Keith, competed on the basketball courtroom for Louisiana State University.
“You fouled, you did it, raise your hand admit it/That’s right, you fouled, you did it, raise your hand admit it,” go the lyrics. “That’s right, you walked, you traveled and got caught.”
“Indigo Park” marks the fifth-straight album Hornsby has tapped guitarist Gibb Droll and the musician says it provides listeners a peek into the inside lifetime of the singer-songwriter.
“It’s more personal. I think his fans will feel like they’re getting a glimpse of the man and what he thinks about,” says Droll, who performs on 5 tracks.
As for the weirder songs, the guitarist says that is a part of the Hornsby expertise. “I don’t know of anyone that has continued to push the boundaries the way he does,” Droll says.
“If it’s truly art, it should challenge you at some point. The listener should be challenged to feel ‘Do I like this? I don’t know. Oh my God, I think I love it.’ And then by the eighth time, hopefully, you’re looking forward to those little weird nooks and crannies.” Droll says.
Hornsby, who performs accordion, dulcimer and piano on the gathering, picked an Edward Hopper print — “Night Shadows,” a duplicate of which he owns — because the album cowl. It depicts a person alone on a darkish road.
“I thought, well, this could be called my aging record. When you’re about gone or ready to be gone you realize you’re alone, man,” he says. “I see this lone guy walking around. I thought that’s me right now. It spoke to me in that way. So, I used it.”
“Indigo Park” comes 40 years after the one and album “The Way It Is,” Hornsby’s debut. In the years since, he has been inconceivable to categorize, having songs scattered throughout nation, grownup up to date, rock, jazz, bluegrass and people charts. He’s performed with the Grateful Dead and everybody from Bob Dylan to Chaka Khan.
He laughs that the songs maintain up from that early time, however he would possibly fireplace the frontman. “I’m not a fan of that singer. I guess I’d call myself a slow learner in that way. It’s gotten better through the years, at least to me.”
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