Daniel Lanois' third solo album Shine-- the first since his decade-old For The Beauty Of Wynona-- is difficult to swallow, and not because of any challenging experimentation, politics, or off-kilter production. None of that, nah.
What got me nervous about this album is that, for his reputation, it's the most drab, adult-oriented product to make it to my stereo since some Starbucks-sipping visitor got sentimental about the Magnolia soundtrack. "Those frogs were symbolic!" he cried, and asked me to bow with him before his shrine to Aimee Mann.
It's here we enter the world of the tame, a land where Sting is king and Phil Collins is raucous. It's the bottled atmosphere of Borders, the safety a slightly left-wing baby boomer craves as they sip tea and read bestsellers about other baby boomers. It's Jeff Healey. Lanois writes somewhat catchy, almost moody stuff, but when I say "moody" I mean like a CEO gets moody when there isn't enough whole milk in his latte.
My dad's a nice man. I imagine him not only liking Shine, but also finding it soothing; he could downright chill to this. If pops and I were resting on his overstuffed couch, the few things on Shine I enjoyed-- faint bells during the first minute of "I Love You", off-key guitar, chimes, a pedal steel-- wouldn't make an impression on him, while the many things he'd love-- "This reminds me of a less crazy Astral Weeks!"-- would have me flashing back to the summer I interned at Musician Magazine, brewing weak coffee for Rush fans with fake tans and male-pattern-baldness ponytails.
The production on Shine is beyond clean: slide guitar winds in like a coma, tumbleweeds bounce into the sky, a creepy voice exhales and makes me jump. Layers and distances are detailed, but nothing overlaps or crowds, always shiny. Anesthetic, like a commercial.
Lanois produced the record himself, and if you don't know his name, he also produced Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind, Peter Gabriel's So and Us, and U2's The Joshua Tree and All That You Can't Leave Behind, to list but a few of his credits. So no, I'm not talking DIY: his microphones probably cost more than my apartment. Maybe you're a better person than I am, maybe you can hurdle the squeaky-clean production. Answer me this: do you find the Counting Crows moving? If so, you're halfway there.
Aside from the overproduction, the songwriting is pat: none of the tracks deviate from what's laid out in the first stanza: "No need to worry about surprises, sir/ Just sit back and relax, sir." Three of the four instrumentals are decent, clean versions of Will Oldham's Odes, while "Space Key" takes the ghostly atmospherics of "Transmitter" and "JJ Leaves L.A.", including a drum machine so crisp, it's as if you're forever riding into the sunset, leaving town on 70mm stock.
What Lanois always has, no matter what he brings to the table personally, is star power. Emmylou Harris offers backup on the album opener, "I Love You", and Bono chimes in with a mellow vocal turn on the second track, "Pretty Falling At Your Feet". The sunglassed one wrote the track with Lanois during the All That You Can't Leave Behind sessions; for all his shallow pomposity, Bono can be tolerable-- even pretty-- when he isn't trying to pretend he's smarter than he is.
What does Lanois himself sound like? He sounds like everyman-- he's French Canadian. No accent; he could be a newscaster in the Heartland. There's no doubt he's an accomplished producer, but he drops the ball trying to communicate anything other than light-weight, overextended metaphors: "My tremolo, you're my fire...what keeps me walking is your shine." His odd musings are especially grating because he mixes the vocals so high.
Final litmus test: in the liner notes Lanois writes, "What a privilege to be able to make music.Here is a small portion of what's cooking in the kitchen. I hope that some piece of it will elevate your spirit. May we all touch a heart somewhere, sometime." Your gut reaction to his best wishes is a solid indication of how palatable you'll find Shine.
