Joe Jackson - Rain

Stepping out for the first time in five years

From new wave firebrand to globe-hopping metropolitan Renaissance man, Jackson’s career path has seen him stop off at several intriguing points. Jump jive big band projects, modern film noir soundtracks, fiction writing, idiosyncratic theatre commissions and sideman duties for (eek!) William Shatner may not have resulted in the high profile afforded by hits such as It’s Different For Girls or Steppin’ Out, but Rain is perhaps his most commercially appealing work for some time.

If there has to be a link to what’s gone before, the urban sophistication and adult lyrical concerns are probably closest to 1981’s Night & Day. Jackson’s piano is at the forefront (there’s not a single note of guitar anywhere on the album, the few solos courtesy of Graham Maby’s bass), gracing a delicate suite of unconnected songs that suggest an equal fondness for Steely Dan and Duke Ellington. Too Tough returns once again to the old themes of romantic doubt, underscored by a motif borrowed from Leiber & Stoller’s On Broadway, while Rush Across The Road could be read as a belated sequel to Jackson’s breakthrough hit Is She Really Going Out With Him?, the protagonist a wiser and less frustrated man.

Citizen Sane is the closest Jackson gets to rocking out, but it’s a far cry from the youthful arrogance of I’m The Man. He’s still as caustic and as witty as ever, but the social commentary is couched in a mood swing complexity/simplicity that Jimmy Webb or Burt Bacharach would be proud of.

Rykodisc | RCD 10921

Reviewed by Terry Staunton
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