Rod Stewart
Another Country, Decca
Rod Stewart historians might ponder the title of his new self-penned collection and wonder how it relates to the loon-pant legs that bestride The Pond on the cover of Atlantic Crossing 40 years ago. A listen might suggest that if this is indeed Another Country, the topography is mighty familiar. The title track is a pipes-adorned musing on both fatherhood and fatherland (Auld Scotia, of course) that even includes a lyrical nod to his UK No1 with the Sutherland Brothers' Sailing.
Originality, then, is not something to be searching for in a set that sounds so much like a Rod Stewart album it veers dangerously close to self-parody, and will probably be very popular as a result. Lyrical and musical cliches abound on titles like Love Is and Walking In The Sunshine. Love is, apparently, "like a four-leafed clover/ Hard to find and hold on to". We Can Win is a tilt at a terracing anthem, expressing a love for the beautiful game, Way Back Home a hymn of remembrance, complete with a sample of Winston Churchill's war-time rhetoric, and Love And Be Loved an attempt at lovers' rock, that comes close to being racist in its 70s-tourism-advert evocation of the laid-back high life in the Caribbean. "Teach our children the meaning of commitment", sings the connoisseur of blondes, his tongue presumably very firmly in his cheek.
Keith Bruce
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