The pop music world can sometimes be a din of noise and homogenized pop, with artists from the key trends having careers that often don’t last as long as a major league baseball season. A musical artist who has had a long, acclaimed career, but only now is releasing a solo album is John Leventhal.
He has worked primarily as a record producer but also as an engineer, a songwriter, and an instrumentalist for decades, working on countless albums that are critically acclaimed, but also recordings that win prestigious awards and sell well. He is probably most known for his work with Marc Cohn and Rosanne Cash, (to whom Leventhal is married), and for producing Shawn Colvin’s album Steady On which won the Grammy for album of the year in 1988.
His solo debut reflects the place where he has lived and also produced many of the albums he helmed; New York. But rather than, a brash, in-your-face sound, he has made a mostly guitar instrumental album that could be called urban acoustic. This is the sound of the city at night, when the streets are not filled with people and activity. One can almost fill in the missing sounds of random car horns, the rumble of trucks, and even the echo of the bark of a stray dog.
There are some tracks with vocals, including two by Cash on “That’s All I Know About Arkansas,” a song Leventhal wrote with Cash and “If You Only Knew” and one by Leventhal himself, “The Only Ghost,” which he co-wrote with Marc Cohn, that was to be a part of Dr. John’s final album. There are also some more pronounced country flavorings on “Meteor.”
The album is a breath of fresh air amidst the stagnant sounds of today’s music scene and a timeless recording that will stick around for a long time. Let’s hope now that Leventhal has finally recorded an album of is own, there are many more to follow.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B
