Steve Wynn
Sweetness and Light
Zero Hour, 14 West 23rd St., 4th Floor, New York NY 10010, fiona@zerohour.com
Release Date: 1997
Popular music has turned into the cereal aisle at the supermarket. A cartoon zoo peers out at you from cages of flashy color and empty calories, a sugar tornado ready to sandblast your insides. But way down at the end of the row, on the bottom shelf (out of sight of the kids clamoring for Lucky Charms and Sugar Smacks), the Quaker Oats guy peers smugly out of his canister, knowing he's got more nutritional content than all those whipper-snapper circus animals put together.
Steve Wynn is the oatmeal of the music business. Versatile, solid, and ultimately more satisfying than radio's flavor of the moment. Sweetness and Light, his latest solo album, is a hearty helping of pop music goodness, tasty and real without all the additives and preservatives. Ground-zero rockers like "Black Magic," sinister Pulp-meets-Nick Cave crooners like "This Deadly Game," and gentle folk jabs like "If My Life Was an Open Book" are examples of the magic that can happen when rocker and songwriter converge.
In the tradition of Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and Johnny Cash (why can I only think of men?), Steve Wynn still makes music because he's still got something to say. Nearly 20 years after The Dream Syndicate first gave the world a window on Wynn's talent, Sweetness and Light is only the latest installment in a lifelong love affair with songcraft. Flaws in the fabric of Wynn's songs become texture; rather than airbrush his quirks and inconsistencies, he layers and blends them until you can't tell that they're not supposed to be there. He's an artist, of course, but more importantly, he's an artisan; inspiration is only a launching pad for skill.
Wynn tends toward unabashed pop, but Sweetness and Light is far from cotton candy. At the center of the Tootsie Pop is a knot of bittersweet emotion. Simple and rich aren't mutually exclusive, and Wynn's recipe is both nutritious and delicious.
-- Lindy Powell
powell@outersound.com
