john hiatt: the tiki bar is open

BY CAMERON LEADER-PICONE

Thankfully, Hiatt has eschewed even the modest success of his standard "Have a Little Faith in Me," having returned to his acoustic folk, blues, and country roots on his last album, Crossing Muddy Waters. On The Tiki Bar is Open, Hiatt retains his artistic focus while bringing back his full band, the Goners. The presence of the band makes a huge difference as the music plays in full and varied textures, recalling the superb band work on the most recent Bob Dylan album, Love and Theft.

It is Dylan and many other '60s folk-rock legends whose shadows are cast over the entire album. Besides the obvious lyrical references to "Like A Rolling Stone" playing in the background, the lyrics shift masterfully in tone from abstractly imagistic to startlingly personal.

The constant theme of the album is coming to terms with middle age. And while that doesn't seem to have much potential in the way of originality, Hiatt breathes new life into the clichéd themes by adding a level of humor and intelligence one rarely sees in such reflective albums.

Yes, Hiatt is looking back towards his youth, but when he looks back, all he sees are "dust and bones." He feels insecure in his aging, but he understands that he was insecure in his youth and that he cannot go back. The only security he finds in his world is in love, but he understands that love is often fleeting as well.

The Tiki Bar is Open requires several listens to discover the lyric complexity underlying the beautifully textured playing of the band, but it's a rewarding album that I find myself returning to at unexpected times. Any album that deals so explicitly with middle age and aging is bound to get bogged down at some point, and this album is no exception. Yet balancing the couple of mediocre songs are many great songs. The silliness of the title is explained in the track of the same name, where the singer's "leave of absence" from "reality" is brilliantly undercut with the bluesy music and an insecurity reflected in the lyrics.

The album's best song, "I Know a Place," sounds like an electric Chicago blues rag, with Hiatt's vocals and guitarist Sonny Landreth's slide guitar carrying a scary tale of a sort of rural hell, where everything and everybody is stuck in place and can't escape. Landreth's talents are fully brought to bear on the final track, "Farther Stars," a nine-minute, psychedelic bayou romp that recalls the early work of Dr. John crossed with Up-era R.E.M. As Hiatt sings "Like you I didn't have the heart to die/Still so many things left to say," drum loops and slide guitar take the song to places one would never expect from any country-rock singer-songwriter.

Hiatt has never managed to experience much success for himself, even as artists from Iggy Pop to Bonnie Raitt and B.B. King have covered his songs (he wrote "Riding with the King"), and this album is probably not going to bring him much in the way of new success. However, it is, for much of its 11 songs, an intelligent meditation on aging that echoes some of Bob Dylan's recent return to form.

Hiatt's work recalls many of the supposed "new Dylans," from John Prine to Jackson Browne, and although The Tiki Bar is Open isn't as brilliantly universal as Dylan's latest record, Hiatt continues to make great music without being afraid to take risks in his approach. (Vanguard)

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