David Gates' "Falling In Love Again" album came out at the tail-end of 1979 (the album actually lists 1980 as the copyright date). One song from the album, the A-side "Where Does The Lovin' Go", appears on the readily available 2 CD Bread "Retrospective", but apart from that, it appears that the album has never been officially released on CD anywhere in the world.
Gates' first two solo albums, 1973's "First" and 1975's "Never Let Her Go" were only mild commercial successes, and compared to what Bread was accomplishing saleswise in the early '70s, they were probably considered downright flops. Bread's 1977 'reunion' album "Lost Without Your Love" was quite successful commercially, and Gates subsequently scored a couple sizable solo hits in '77-'78 with "Goodbye Girl" and "Took The Last Train". The commercial success proved to be something of a fluke--the "Falling In Love Again" album didn't even chart in Billboard's US Top 200, and it ended up being Gates' last album for Elektra, and following 1981's Arista-released "Take Me Now", Gates basically retired from the music business for the rest of the decade.
All that said, it'd be easy to suspect that "Falling In Love Again" is a last gasp hiccup from an artist past his prime and ready to hang it up, especially considering that the album's total running time barely, if even, reaches the half hour mark.
Such a short running time might get you thinking "rip off", but the brevity and conciseness of the record actually prove compelling. Gates wrote all 10 songs here himself, and it's as if someone said to David, "Okay man, you've got half an hour of space to show us what you've got." The end result is an album that uncannily demonstrates how to write insanely catchy, finely-trimmed, expertly-timed pop-rock songs.
The only song here that's even slightly 'off' is, ironically, the aforementioned "Where Does The Lovin' Go". It's not a bad demonstration of Gates' "hit ballad" formula, and melodically it's even quite memorable. But the lyrics are ultra-predictable and the song just ends up feeling too obvious and crassly-calculated. It's somehow telling that this was the album's 'major' single.
Each and every one of the other nine songs are gems. Granted, many of the songs here aren't that 'meaningful' (with a capital 'M'). And yes, many of the songs, including basically all of 'side 2', fall into the feel-good category, but they're all top-notch, making for an album that's a heck of a lot of pure fun. Just look at the little ingenious hooks Gates slips in, such as his enunciation of the word "other" on the choruses of "Starship Ride"; or his emphasis of the word "temptation" on the chorus of the hysterically cartoonish, "Get Back"-style rocker "Sweet Desire". "Chingo" is another amusing tune, with witty lyrics sung from the point of view of a free-spirited roadie--it's a country-western flavored ditty, with Dan Dugmore on steel guitar, but it also beams in calypso drums on the chorus for a tropical feel. The album-opening "Can I Call You" is an irresistibly catchy rocker, with an arresting yearning quality to it--the lyrics are quite dumb, but redeemed by the fact that Gates seems to have his tongue firmly in cheek. "20th Century Man" is a punchy, edgy rocker--it's something of a cautionary tale, with really biting lyrics. "She Was So Young" is a sighing, 3/4 time, orchestrated acoustic ballad--it's lyrically eloquent tale of a married man who has an affair with a much younger girl/ woman, vividly-detailed and more than a little heart-wrenching. "Silky" is in the same vein as "Took The Last Train", but more musically complex, with mind-boggling chord changes worthy of Steely Dan in their complexity, as well as the overall insane catchiness. The breezy title track is an amusingly corny and irresistible ballad. And the toe-tappingly catchy album-closer "The Rainbow Song" is a feel-good story-song, very witty again, with an easy-going vibe, and just plain fun.
Gates may have been running out of 'things to say'--this album is a LONG way off from "First" in terms of epic-ness and making a 'serious' artistic statement. However, he was able to compensate and make a positive out of it by letting his hair down a bit and staying in touch with his sheer feel for ultra-catchy hooks. Tip your hat to a master craftsman at work--"Falling In Love Again" is an irresistible album.
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nice song; thanks for introducing it to me!
nosleep62 6 months ago
I absolutely love 'I Took The Last Train'. Fab.
Glamagal20091 10 months ago