Peter Wolf: Sleepless

Epic/Sony Music

Playing Time: 58:23

D. Malcolm Fairbrother

Reinvention...it's a dangerous move at the best of times, especially so if you are an artist in the field of popular music. Any musician who opts for reinvention risks incurring the wrath of and ultimately being abandoned by once-loyal fans, many of whom want nothing more than to be reminded of whatever it is they think they once were in their heyday. They have little or no interest in the musician's quest for maturation or progression of image or style; many of them barely tolerate artistic growth let alone a complete overhaul of substance and direction, especially if they own said artist's greatest hits package where they can safely wallow in the past.

Moreover, the people who missed the artist the first time around are not very likely to get caught up in the reincarnation of such a career, especially given the recent entry into endangered species status of radio stations willing to take risks with their playlists as they pander to the denizens of an aging marketplace, their ears begging to hear echoes of the past as if such incantations might magically stop time in its tracks with an endless repetition. Pity such shallow fans, o my children. They miss remarkable achievements such as the one accomplished by Peter Wolf on his latest CD, Sleepless.

Peter Wolf, former lead singer of the J Geils band and co-writer along with Seth Justman of enough memorable songs to keep that group in the public eye and ear for over a decade, split from the band in the early '80s over artistic differences, mainly with his writing partner. Since then, his career as a solo artist has seen him try on a variety of musical styles as he fearlessly explores genres that are indeed evidence of how far Wolf has traveled from the bar-band swagger and the ballsy, bluesy strutting he employed in his role as lead singer of the Geils outfit; and yet, he has not lost sight of those influences, choosing rather to extend those insights that they have burned into his musical conscience into fresher territory.

Wolf's last two works, Long Line (1996) and Fool's Parade (1998) showed an ever-growing maturity of style and craftsmanship as he moved steadily away from exclusively replicating his J. Geils days. Sleepless opens with Growing Pains, a song that serves notice right from the opening chords of a softly strummed guitar delicately interstitched with a plucked inlay of mandolin that the artist has continued the maturation process. On this number, indeed on almost every one of the dozen delicious offerings he serves up, he reaches new heights, largely by using understatement of lyric and presentation to effectively distill his themes down to honest drops of truth refined from bittersweet experience. When he admonishes us to 'be careful what you pursue: choosing it, it chooses you' the listener believes this world-weary troubadour. Life is indeed a 'live and learn' proposition filled not only with growing pains, but also cautionary tales.

Nothing But The Wheel finds Wolf hooking up with Mick Jagger on a country blues number that he admits in the liner notes would not have been out of place on the Stones' Exile On Main Street. In fact, it does not tax one's imagination to any degree to transplant a number of the songs from this work to something akin to a Great Lost Stones Album without demeaning either side of the equation. Jagger's counterpoint harmonies join the ever elegant fiddle lines and pedal steel guitar urgings of Larry Campbell, Dylan sideman and virtuoso; they wander like sad trails through heartbreak territory taking the listener to the edge of despair with the early morning isolation of the singer in the guise of a discarded lover rolling down an near-empty road in a grey dawn.

Wolf frequently mines the same territory as fellow performers Van Morrison and Bob Dylan. He is capable of expressing both an exquisite sadness and a joy that borders on pain in one musical setting, then spinning a metaphor that masterfully leaves space enough for the listener through which to filter one's own experiences as a key to a personal interpretation. A Lot Of Good Ones Gone is a reflective look over the shoulder at past choices, with the maturity to accept one's fate and regret it at one and the same time. The singer also confronts the fleeting nature of time and the awareness that life is a fatal disease with one hundred percent mortality rate. It is a reflective reminder of the ticking of the clock for all boomers, soulful and world-weary. Strong currents of metaphor drive Run Silent, Run Deep, obscuring and obfuscating meaning with Dylanesque conflicts, where images of floods and strong currents collide with ladies drowning and dying of thirst. Despite differing in style and substance from just about everything else on the CD, this song serves as a cohesive force in that its daring departure from what one might expect from a Peter Wolf offering prepares us for the diversity of styles still to come.

Unafraid to reveal the sensitivities of loving one's Five O'clock Angel as she eases the monotony of the sameness of days by singing to his secret places, Wolf pairs this song with the softly jazzy and quizzical Hey Jordon. The singer fairly croons the beautiful ballad that is the former, and adopts a light-hearted yet contemplative vocal to tease and instruct the lady in question who seems to be questioning her life's search for love. It is a delectable bit of jazz, smooth as smoke.

With a wink and a nod, Peter Wolf pays homage to his former days as a frontman in a bar-blues-boogie band. Too Close Together catches the ribald and raunchy suggestiveness of earlier Geils growls. The song is a throwaway jive-jump number...almost: any song with Keith Richards riffing and growling demands a more attentive listen. Never Like This Before is driven into Geils territory by the horn section and by the singer's hyperbolic love prose, his enthusiasm granting him our forgiveness. The song approaches the height of becoming a classic barroom standard. Homework is a direct reprise of an Otis Rush song familiar to those who know the Geils catalogue; call this the 'unplugged' version, if a growling Tom Wait's vocal, words filtered through gravel and whiskey insinuate themselves across a fine and rootsy musical bed of mandolin organ and guitar grooves. At Wolf's age, the concept of homework becomes humorous, almost metaphorical.

For good measure, Wolf throws in a pure country, heartbreak pity-party song (Some Things You Don't Want To Know). It's a romantic ballad that is born of Mexican parentage but raised by the big city street corner harmonies gleaned from assorted 50's groups, and one that demonstrates an artist who perhaps has not earned the respect of his audience by paying and repaying his dues. As such, Wolf's eclectic selection is beyond reproach. He delivers the goods, consistently and with exhilarating effect, whatever the style he chooses to adopt.

One can only hope that Wolf remains Sleepless, his restlessness driving him to explore other musical avenues, or even to travel once more those paths that are far from beaten flat. Wherever he goes, this listener will eagerly await the next report from whatever landscape he chooses to probe.