Hall & Oates: A Handy Summary

My discovery of the year is Hall & Oates. Ubiquitous in the '80s, they've been trying to score a Bonnie Raitt/Ray Charles-style comeback for the last three years, to little success. What has been a success is realizing how great (with some qualifications) their peak-period product was. Like the Beatles, Stones, and Pet Shop Boys, to name just three random examples, they got weirder they more popular they got. Which is why the remastered editions of Private Eyes, H20, and Big Bam Boom haven't left my stereo in months.

Let's face it: H&O wrote great pop songs which, like all great pop, synthesized all that was most creative in the reigning subgenres of the day (new wave, synth-pop, arena-rock). That they succeeded without being likable is one of the great mysteries of the universe. I suspect their misanthropy (and misogyny) kept them from getting their critical due -- well, that and their popularity; five multiplatinum records, four #1 singles, and 12 top 10's between 1981 and 1985 awakened most pundit's rockist impulses). Some mini-reviews of what I've managed to hear:

Private Eyes (1981)
With the previous year's Voices, H&O found their voice: creating three-minute pop songs with a touch of soul and more than a little paranoia. Form redeemed content. The handclaps and multi-tracked vocal of "Private Eyes" helps you forget that Daryl Hall is an uncommonly jittery frontman. The three or four overlapping synth lines (played by Hall, an underrated keyboardist) on "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)" are worthy of Dare-era Human League. Although "Did It In A Minute" wouldn't be out of place as the theme song to an early '80s sitcom, "Head Above Water" and "Looking for a Good Sign" are too frantic to have fit in anywhere. The sleeper is "Your Imagination," whose sick, woozy organ hook and sneering John Oates harmonies deserve to be sampled by Basement Jaxx. Grade: A-

H20 (1982)
Despite his enthusiasm and considerable finesse, Daryl Hall was never the most convincing soul man. He's insistent without being ingratiating, like an A student who wants every student in the class to read what a great history essay he's written. And he's a truly confused songwriter. Where, say, Bryan Ferry's narcissism was endearing (and at least on Avalon he went so far into narcissism that he emerged unscathed as the Love God he always aspired to be), Hall just sounds like a creep. "One on One" is H&O's best smoochfest, but Hall erodes his outreach by insisting it's all a game. No doubt there are women attracted to men who don't try to hide their sharp fangs. Elsewhere, H20 finds H&O pretty much at their peak; this is by far their most consistent album. The guitar-pop throwaways at the end of the record ("Delayed Reaction," "Guessing Games") wouldn't be out of place on a Marshall Crenshaw album; "Maneater" definitively proves that any song which appropriates the bassline to The Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love" is a guaranteed classic. And John Oates comes up with the album's best melody, impressing the Italian girls in the song of the same name with his knowledge of vino rosso. Grade: A

Big Bam Boom (1984)
Title says it all. So does the cover art. H&O hire Arthur Baker to remix several cuts to give their most programmed and dated album a gauche dance sheen (opener "Dance On Your Knees" is a ringer for New Order's "Confusion"). The big hits were "Out of Touch" (also their worst video, in a career full of appalling ones) and "Method of Modern Love," whose title gives away the game: Daryl, who can't resist lecturing his conquests, explains How It's Supposed To Work even while his delicious falsetto distracts us from the fact that his hand is unbuttoning your shirt. There's not much else here except for the unexpected tact of the ballad "Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid" and John Oates' ominous "Cold Dark & Yesterday". H&O's crack touring band, responsible for the crisp arrangements on the preceding three albums, has a noticeably diminished profile. Baker's echo-heavy, Synclavier-happy production has the effect of accentuating Hall's increasing smugness (she's an "All American Girl" because she wants it all -- and guess what "all" rhymes with?). Big Bam Boom would prove a most effective sendoff; Hall would go on to an aborted, big-haired solo career (peaking with the swirling David Stewart-produced hit "Dreamtime, a better "Don't Come Around Here No More" than Tom Petty's), while Oates went on to race cars and do whatever else short ugly men with bad mustaches do (like cowrite Icehouse's 1988 Top 10 "Electric Blue; how'd that happen?). Grade: B