1972 Case File #59.
February 10th, 2010
Harry Chapin, Sniper And Other Love Songs
File Between: Jim Croce and David Ackles
Comments: My most significant emotion about Harry Chapin for the last seveal years has been regret that I included “Taxi” in my Hundred Songs Of The Seventies, mostly because I’m never in the mood to listen to it and always skip it when it comes up on the playlist. So this record started out with a strike against it in the form of totally unjustified irritation with a song from a completely different album. And it only partly won me over. You really have to be in a specific headspace to allow the Chapin magic to work on you — the kind of headspace where clumsy rhymes and great whacking obvious metaphors don’t bother you, what matters is the conviction and the imagery — but as I get older and more fastidious about the kinds of lyrics I won’t roll my eyes at, I’m less and less willing to move into that headspace. His band is good — I especially liked the gestures towards rocking out on “Burning Herself” and “Woman Child” — but his song structures are so ungainly that I kept being reminded of a specific form of late 60s/early 70s cultural expression, the Narrative Poem For Children, with its ugly, rubbery illustrations (the inside-sleeve illustrations here partake of the same Gormenghastian aesthetic) and conviction that Structure was a Hidebound Tradition of the Past, and Freeform is Where It’s At, right kids? And I totally hated the nine-minute title track. The Boomtown Rats did it better with “I Don’t Like Mondays,” and they didn’t need to make their killer whine about how nobody listened.
A Keeper? That said, there’s enough loveliness and actual lyrical heft here to make up for the bits I didn’t care for. Chapin is one of the great weirdo singer/songwriters of the period, and it’s a shame that most people only know him for “Cat’s In The Cradle.”
Vinyl Rip: Barefoot Boy