Huey Lewis and The News

Plan B

The Man and The Band -- getting it back

Review Score:

(6/10)
First, this is a step in the right direction. It's quite a bit better than the last album of HLN originals, "Hard at Play." They have installed a permanent horn section (though a lot of their problems still lie in this area), recaptured some of the groove from the time they were turning out absolutely unbelievable songs in the 80s, and retained some of the retro-50's sound from "Four Chords." A few songs might be single-worthy (though it's hard to imagine exactly what radio stations will go for them nowadays). The album started off with a good sales rating on Amazon; it will get back some old fans and might win some new ones.

Which is good. Because I care about this band. They're so damn talented -- they represent a kind of band-wide, multi-tasking kind of talent that no popular groups or performers right now can match. If you see them perform live, you can see the talent is still there, mostly. But they're still not capturing it, and to me at least it's pretty clear where the problems are.

There are two great things about Huey Lewis and the News: Huey, and the News. Sounds obvious -- but it's a good way to break down the band's fix-able weaknesses. Now, in no particular order,

Huey issues:

Range -- Aside from a couple of spots, the songs all have Huey mostly dinking around the middle of his range. Might sound like a minor issue, but it's one of the first things that struck me about these songs. Most of the older hits all have Huey at some crucial climactic moment reaching (successfully) to the top of his range -- and it's a beautiful thing.

Songwriting -- A few songs (Thank You #19 and I Never Think About You) are truly forgetable and seem aimless. A number of others -- the rest of tracks 3 through 8 -- are just mediocre, with the exception, perhaps, of Plan B (they do a fine job with a blues tune). Notably absent is the power ballad, which used to be an HLN strength (e.g. Stuck with You, even World to Me on "Small World"). One song comes close -- Let Her Go and Start Over. But it's one of two songs on the album written by someone other than Huey. The songs are better than Hard at Play -- and there's nothing totally brainless like that album's "Do You Love Me or What?" Tracks 1 and 2 here are quality. "So Little Kindness is fine," though it still suffers from arrangement problems (see below). But if the well is drying up, maybe it's time to reach beyond the band more often for song material...

Harmonica -- why are they so shy about featuring the harp on studio albums? The guy's a respectable harmonica player -- use that sound more than a few bars once an album.

Then, equally important, there's the News:

Horn arrangements -- So they finally made horns actual members of the band. Formal recognition that horns are crucial to the HLN sound -- it's about time. But the arrangements aren't doing justice to this decision. The wonderful thing about the Tower of Power horns (well, one wonderful thing) was that their horn lines were so often *polyphonic* -- it was rich and exciting, and crafting new arrangements took a little time so it was something listeners couldn't get from a lot of other bands. So why do horns on HLN songs now spend so much time playing in unison? You've got four horns, for crying out loud -- use 'em! This was the problem with the first version of So Little Kindness, for example -- and they haven't fixed it this time around. The horns do form occasional chords, and the unison lines are not exactly bad, but it just sounds thin. To me, this stands out as a major weakness in the HLN sound.

Harmony vocals -- this is the other. This is what I mean by multi-tasking skill. All these guys can sing. Harmony vocals in classic HLN were three, four, maybe five parts. In some of its greatest moments, the band and Huey sang to each other. Few other bands put as much care into arrangements, and even fewer could pull it off so brilliantly. Now we're lucky to get an occasional duet vocal -- when it happens it's one of the things that helps My Other Woman and Let Her Go and Start Over click. Good lord -- horns and harmony vocals are what make the News one of the greatest bands of all time. Bring 'em back!!

Sax solos -- I counted one of any substance on this album. No wonder there were rumors Johnny Colla was thinking of leaving the band -- he's totally underutilized. Why bands choose to mostly save their sax players for live shows is a mystery to me. His solos featured in so many of the best songs -- Trouble in Paradise, Do You Believe in Love, Is it Me, Heart of Rock 'n' Roll, Hip to Be Square.

Bass -- I don't know what the story is, but the band lost Mario Cipollina and he's been replaced by John Pierce. And you notice it. Cipollina might have gone underappreciated before, but there's a definite lack of bass presence here. The lines are simple, wallpaper. It makes one appreciate how much life Cipollina subtly gave HLN songs through his bass. Pierce should study up and see how he can inject some of that style in to the new songs.

And that concludes the list of weaknesses that struck me as I listened to Plan B. But I hope it's clear I think this band is far, far from washed up. The songwriting problem is a bit more tricky, but in my view so much of what ails them is just mechanical -- a matter of music arrangements and priorities.

This is easily the longest review I've written. With any luck, it might actually reach the band -- because I care about the sound and the tradition, but I also seriously believe they've still got a real future. They still represent the greatest traditions of American pop.

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