Rod Stewart: The Tears Of Hercules - 2021

 

So, just when I thought that Blood Red Roses may be Rod's last album he comes up with another one - this slick and most likeable offering. 

Yes, it is all very contemporary, radio-friendly pop, ideal for Radio Two, but I guess Rod has been serving up that sort of fare for years now, so just take it for what it is. It is a typical Stewart mix of lecherous sexual references (yes even now) and heart-wrenching nostalgia and sadness. For Rod, the profane and the profound have never been far apart - usually about two or three minutes on an album.

The modern Motown feel of I Can't Imagine stands as a fine example of the sort of material on here - strings, female backing vocals, a great guitar solo and a general easy pop vibe. 

Rod could always pen a fine, moving ballad and he does so here on the slowly anthemic Hold On. I know it's all a tiny bit cheesy, but when old Rod name-checks his lifelong hero Sam Cooke and tells us that a change is gonna come I cant help but getting a little bit teary, even more so when Rod sticks it to "the bigots and the racists". You tell 'em Rod, I'm still with you. Stewart's lyrics can veer from being absurdly amateur to tear-jerkingly moving within a matter of sentences. That has always been the way with Rod - from the ridiculous to the sublime and back again, preposterous, at times laughable, yet movingly endearing. 

Rod also gets all bagpipe-backed and rousingly sentimental on the appropriated tribute to the people of his roots, the Scots, on the uplifting These Are My People. It is actually a Johnny Cash song, would you believe, but the lyrics suit Rod's narrative perfectly. Again, it is corny but I love it, shamelessly. 

All My Days is anther of the Celtic-style acoustic thumping fast-paced ballads that Stewart specialises in these days. It has a feel of Bruce Springsteen's take on My Oklahoma Home from his Seeger sessions album about it. Rod reprises his saucy "midnight trampoline" lyric first used on The Balltrap on A Night On The Town in 1976. 

Some contemporary programmed beats are used on Gabriella, a song which has echoes of Stewart's eighties material. It is better than some of that stuff, however, and features another killer of a guitar solo. The cover of The Drifters' Some Kind Of Wonderful is as vibrant and enthusiastic as you would expect Rod to deliver. Precious Memories has Rod getting misty-eyed about times gone by over  slow, doo-wop late fifties/early sixties backing. 

The Tears Of Hercules is a slow, string-backed ballad with a bit of a fifties feel about it. It is also tremendously moving in its delivery. There is also a bit of Tom Waits floating around in here, I think. Rod takes a few minutes to give us a tribute to Marc Bolan in Born To Boogie. It is unsurprisingly a bit cheesy, but the riffs are 100% authentic. As a seventies boy, I can't help but enjoy it. Overall, there is a considerable amount of variety on this album, exemplified by the thumping, brassy funk-pop of Kookooaramabama. 

A guitar line straight out of Nilsson's Everybody's Talkin' backs the nostalgic singalong One More Time, a song that was made for Radio Two play and has duly got it, day after day, no doubt. I still like it, though, and as I said in the review for Blood Red Roses, I've stuck with Rod all these years - it's too late to stop now. What we are given here is actually pretty good, as a songwriter Rod appears to have got his mojo back. You keep putting 'em out Rod, I'll keep listening. Just as with his previous offering, I have been pleasantly surprised by this and enjoyed it a lot. 

Oh, and On The Touchline, Rod's tribute to his beloved father, brought many a tear to my eye. It's just lovely.