The 1981 Listening Post - Rupert Holmes - Full Circle

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: 1981 Rupert Holmes Full Circle Genre: Easy Listening Rating: 3.25 out of 5 Highlights: The End You Remind Me Of You Full Circle My goal: write a review of a Rupert Holmes album without mentioning THAT song. Here goes. It’s interesting how much AM pop / easy listening sounds like musical theatre. Indeed, Rupert Holmes eventually became a composer of musicals, most notably the Mystery of Edwin Drood. Full Circle opens with a song called The End (“we start at the end”), which is exactly the kind of thing you’d do if you were writing a romantic Off Broadway musical in the early ‘80’s. The songs are written in conversational first person with a narrative voice that could believably be the singer, or might be a character he’s putting on. There are setting changes: in the title track, he’s on a plane, somewhere west of Maine; and then he’s landing at JFK, seeing his lady again, “and it’s almost worth the leaving / to believe in love again / to be back home.” The lyrics strive for just enough creativity to distinguish them from every schmaltzy pop song you’ve ever heard. Sometimes they succeed: You Remind Me of You is a clever way to tell your lady she’s one of a kind. The One of Us is another neat lyric about being in a relationship: “I always knew of us / when we were two of us / we are the one of us / and you are my one.” Really, every song has its own little twist, even if it’s as dorky as Love at Second Sight. The music is exactly what you’re expecting. Smooth grooves, background harmonies, mellow guitar and/or sax solos, choruses that repeat 25 times (with minor variations), and that friendly voice up front. Basically a less brassy Barry Manilow. Throw in some fake world beats here and there. Key changes when necessary. Melodies that stick in your head with the occasional jump to a high note you weren’t quite expecting. More chords than rock, but fewer than jazz. Plaintive piano chords on the ballads. And oh yeah, synth strings. Lots of synth strings. The guitarist is Dean Bailin, not a name I’d expect anyone to recognize. But I just finished reading Paul Shaffer’s memoir, so it rang a bell. Dean was one of those NYC studio cats who gigged nonstop throughout the 80’s and 90’s. The Shaffer connection was Gilda Radner’s album, Live from New York, which was an Off-Broadway show she did. I don’t recognize any other names, but I’m pretty sure they’re all session pros with great chops put together at considerable expense to make what most of us would consider inoffensive wallpaper. Honestly though, if I wanted to write emotional pop songs for the musically unadventurous, there’s no way I could touch Rupert Holmes. He’s super good at what he does, and one suspects that, even if he’d never written THAT song, he’d have sustained a long career. Good for him. (OK, I didn’t mention it by name, but I guess referring to “THAT song” in the last paragraph was cheating. Sorry.)