Gil Hates Everything

You ought to know Jason Robert Brown’s name by now; his major shows include this, “Parade”, “The Last 5 Years”, and “13”, and he’s also banged out a very good solo album, “Wearing Someone Else’s Clothes”. He’s been called the new Sondheim, and certainly Sarah grimaces in pretty much the same way when someone shows up with a JRB song for an audition ;-)

Buuuuut… that’s actually only four shows in fifteen years – we’re going to generously discount his gun-for-hire work on “Urban Cowboy” – and his style is so radical, and radically popular, that he gets a lot of attention. And he merits it. His song style is exciting, typically a fast and furious jazz rock, with – thank god! – impeccable prosody despite his bonkers syllable-counts, and he’s good at character-building. And he’s funny. And he’s emotional. And he writes actual songs, actual content, rather than being overly cool or ironic. He really loves it, you can tell. And he hasn’t yet written a song about how he’s writing a musical. There’s an awful lot to like about Jason Robert Brown.

On the other hand, this particular revue contains songs written up to the age of 25, and while some of them are remarkable, some of them are turgid, and increasingly so as time passes. The downside of your repertoire being out of your control is that people will insist on performing your songs from years ago, and you have to hope that listeners will be forgiving of the fact that you know full well you can write better songs, that you’re a different person, and that you might well wish you’d never written some songs in the first place. Bobby McFerrin refuses to perform “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” at his concerts, despite it being immensely popular and arguably his only hit, because it’s just not where he is anymore; it’s decades old and he feels he has more to say with his contemporary material. In musical theatre you can, I guess, withhold the rights for a show, but that cuts down on your income, and it doesn’t stop people from analyzing your songs in a time-travelling context – which is, after all, exactly what I’m here to do.

The result is I think this show is bulked out by juvenalia and filler as much as it contains songs which we’ll still be singing in forty years’ time. And there’s the sexism… oh, twitch, twitch, twitch, it makes me twitch so much. “Just One Step”, “I’m Not Afraid Of Anything”, “Stars And The Moon”, “She Cries” (and even “Surabaya-Santa” if you want to stretch the point) are all harmless enough in quality terms, but underlying them all there’s the sharklike shape of a worrying way of thinking: women are grasping bitches, boys, and we wild and free male spirits should beware them. Perhaps JRB knew a lot of buddies who got fucked up by the undeniable number of iffy women in the world, and perhaps he assumed that some hypothetical Jennette Roberta Brown would address the issues from the female perspective, and yes, you have to squint a little to see this because of the skilful use of humour, and it’s not like I’m demanding that all songs for women to sing or about women should make them out to be angels, and yadda yadda yadda… but… take a moment to look at the track listing, would you, and point to the songs which comment in equal measure on the deficiencies of men. I’ll be right here.

Uh huh.

Fortunately there are a few moments of unquestionable genius in here. “The New World” has the occasional vague moment in the lyrics (stop fucking “flying”, people!) but uses the most basic and yet effective technique to keep raising the stakes, modulating higher and higher until, as a singer, you realize you’re exclaiming the same “Jesus Christ!” that the guy says in “The Song That Goes Like This”. Modulating up once is a ballad cliche, twice is pushing your luck, but six times, while threatening overkill, is utterly thrilling to hear and perform. “Stars And The Moon” is a well-composed song, with some subtleties in the lyric (it took me a few listens to notice that she gets stars, at her wedding party). “Surabaya-Santa” is extremely funny, no denying it. And “Hear My Song”, while also a little on the vague side lyrically, gets away with it through its extraordinary tune and some moments of raw emotion. I’m very lucky to have sung that (Broadway Chorus, for all your singing needs ;-) and it’s one of the highlights of my life to have stood behind Yvonne and roared “It’s the one thing I have that has never let me down”. I’d defy anyone to participate in that song and not feel privileged. That one’s a keeper. As is “Christmas Lullaby”, which after some of the earlier bombast, is a lovely piano miniature and a straightforward and sweet song. (It could also be read as an anti-abortion piece; discuss!)

But yeah, there’s also songs like “The Stream Train”, which sounds exactly like it was written sometime not too long before 1995, and quite possibly – let’s be honest, it was the 90s, and we’re all responsible – like it could have charted. Let’s be kind and call it growing up in public. And there’s “The River Won’t Flow”, “Flying Home”… these songs warrant a “bah” and nothing much more.

There are very vague connecting threads in here, with snippets of “A New World” showing up in a couple of places, and I suppose all the songs are about decisions and changes, but for the most part this is better viewed as a showcase rather than a show. I saw it in Vancouver last year, and it was a perfectly reasonable ninety minutes. There’s supposedly an emotional arc for each of the four actors, expressed as the flow of the individual experiences of the characters they play, but it’s pretty subtle… or in other words, I’ve read that it exists, but I didn’t feel it at the time.

It’s probably best to think of this as an exciting first album by a band. He’s done better stuff – you’d certainly hope so, that’s the point of artistic growth – but not many people have done better early stuff. I’m getting to the point where I don’t really need or want to hear it any more, mind you. But JRB is important to musical theatre, as a shining example that you can take an art form by storm if you have a strong enough plan of attack, and as an example of the cross-pollination of genres and media which has always been useful for keeping things vibrant and the next generation interested. So he remains on my “will listen” list, with the proviso that he’s better when he doesn’t have full narrative control. See the GHM writeup of “Parade” if you think I have the slightest doubt about his songwriting abilities in that situation.

Meanwhile, Random Panda awards “Songs For A New World” six out of ten pieces of bamboo (singing about flying in the abstract limits your potential around here… ironically enough) but you’re definitely under orders to listen to “A New World” and “Hear My Song”.

(originally posted 2009)