A long time ago, Steve Winwood was high on my list of favorite artists, back in the days when he was milking that Yamaha DX7 sound for all it was worth – and I loved it, frankly. I was a bit let down when he followed up great albums like Arc Of A Diver and Talking Back To The Night with a long period of silence, and then the mellowed-out Back In The High Life, and then another long hiatus after which he took a head-first plunge into low-tech rock with Roll With It. About Time is a minor letdown to the 80s Winwood fan in me, in that it continues along that path. In retrospect, and having learned a lot more about Winwood’s background since my teenage years, I realize that low-tech rock is what the man’s all about, and perhaps what he’s best at. And on that level, I can enjoy About Time quite a lot.

This time around, instead of trying to recapture his electric-organ-virtuoso Spencer Davis Group days, Steve Winwood is leaning on a sparser, bluesier sound. Every song on About Time sounds like a tune that evolved organically from a loose jam session – and generally, if you’re listening to something with a blues-based sound, that can’t help but be a good thing. And while synthesizers have come and gone out of fashion with him, Winwood still has a full command of his most powerful voice – he still has one of the most distinctive, effortless-sounding voices in rock music. He never sounds like he’s straining to hit a note, and he shows no sign of having written his material around a limited range.

“Cigano” is easily one of the album’s standout tracks, but the show-stealers here are two slow-bake numbers, “Silvia” and most especially “Horizon”, which is one of the best songs Winwood has ever done, hands-down. Now, one byproduct of the easy, bluesy style of most of About Time’s tracks is that it can fade into the background a bit – even, I’ve found, if you’re listening on headphones. But those standout tracks (and your mileage may vary one which songs are the best on the CD) make it worthwhile. You’ll know which ones you like when you like ‘em.

It’s a good album, and it’s good to hear Steve Winwood getting back into the swing of things. I wouldn’t kick him in the shins for giving us a great pop song like he used to, but songs like “Horizon” are timeless and impossible to pigeonhole – and I’ll gladly take that too.

1. Different Light (6:36)
2. Cigano (For The Gypsies) (6:21)
3. Final Hour (5:36)
4. Why Can’t We Live Together? (6:39)
5. Domingo Morning (5:07)
6. Now That You’re Alive (5:29)
7. Bully (5:40)
8. Phoenix Rising (7:27)
9. Horizon (4:31)
10. Walking On (4:55)
11. Silvia (Who Is She?) (11:28)

Released by: Wincraft Music
Release date: 2003
Total running time: 69:51

In 1998, alt-pop rising star Ben Folds took a breather from the then-hugely-successful Ben Folds Five to cook up a side project, more for fun and experimentation than anything, called Fear Of Pop. Two tracks on that album were basically spoken-word poetry/rants set to music, with the poetry honors done by none other than William Shatner of Star Trek fame. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean than Ben’s a dyed-in-the-wool Trekkie, but he has at least copped to an admiration for Shatner’s previous album of music/poetry, The Transformed Man. And lo and behold, enough mutual admiration emerged between Folds and Shatner to spark this little CD called Has Been.

And so help me, it’s kinda fun to listen to.

Fear Of Pop’s “In Love” basically sets the mold for Has Been. Folds provides the musical accompaniment and does the bulk of the actual singing, while William Shatner lends his voice to a serious of monologues. The lyrics are purely Shatner’s, and the music is Folds’ in most cases. And it’s a better combination than you might at first expect. A lot of people are used to equating the Star Trek star with a galactic-scale ego. That includes me, by the way – I’ve read one of the guy’s autobiographies. But somehow he’s able to convey the inherent loneliness and pressure of his somewhat unique position in “It Hasn’t Happened Yet”, “Has Been” and “Real” (a dandy little collaboration with country artist Brad Paisley), and yet also gives full vent to things that bug him in a free-form rant with Henry Rollns, “I Can’t Get Behind That.”

But encroaching age and mortality are also very much in evidence on Has Been. “You’ll Have Time”, presented almost as a mock church sermon, talks about how there’s only so much time to live life but an eternity afterward to look back and regret the things that were never done. This Is Me Trying is a confessional from a man trying to reconcile with a bitterly estranged adult daughter before time runs out for both of them. And most haunting – some might say disturbing – of them all is “What Have You Done.” Not even weighing in at two-minutes, it’s an almost music-free piece in which Shatner relives the true story of coming home to find that his wife had drowned in the swimming pool. One almost has to hit stop after that track and sit back for a bit, maybe listen to something else a bit cheerier, before going on. It’s really a bit of a shock to the system.

Overall, Has Been is startlingly effective as listening material. I wasn’t ready to, as Shatner and Rollins put it, “get behind that” conceptually until I heard it. It’s by no means perfect, and it’s not for everybody by any stretch, but William Shatner’s Has Been must be heard to be believed; Golden Throats, it’s not.

1. Common People featuring Joe Jackson (4:38)
2. It Hasn’t Happened Yet (3:52)
3. You’ll Have Time (5:20)
4. That’s Me Trying featuring Aimee Mann and Ben Folds (3:51)
5. What Have You Done (1:49)
6. Together featuring Lemon Jelly (5:41)
7. Familiar Love (4:02)
8. Ideal Woman (2:26)
9. Has Been (2:21)
10. I Can’t Get Behind That featuring Henry Rollins (3:02)
11. Real featuring Brad Paisley (3:10)

Released by: Shout! Factory
Release date: 2004
Total running time: 40:12

Face it, nostalgia for the 80s is back in. Old arcade games are being repackaged in battery-powerered, self-contained joysticks and sold to us one more time. TV shows from over 20 years ago are hot commodities on DVD. And bands are rising from the ashes of the new wave movement that met its ignominious end with the rise of the hair band era.

Now, to be sure, I’m not sure Duran Duran was ever, strictly speaking, new wave. They took some of the new wave’s synth wizardry and production techniques and dropped a thick, frothy layer of funky guitar licks on top of it – not really a bad mixture, truth be told. You’d be hard-pressed to find too many consistently good 80s albums as Rio. And you’d be equally hard-pressed to find a band from that era making as solidly listenable a comeback as Astronaut, their new offering, and the first in quite some time with all five of Duran Duran’s founding members.

Part of the real shock value of Astronaut is that, while the band has updated its instrumental sound ever so slightly – okay, okay, quite a bit – the defining sound that is Simon Le Bon’s voice, and the great harmonies from the group as a whole, hasn’t changed a bit. If anything, I almost think his range has gotten better with age. On the instrumental side, the synth-heavy tunes show some real evolution from the band’s 80s sound, but it’s in the guitar-centered songs where you’re in for a real shock – quite a few times, we actually get acoustic guitar, and played really well too. Andy Taylor was never a slouch in the guitar department to begin with, mind you, but he really wows me here.

Standouts include the damned catchy “Astronaut” with its euphoric synth sweeps and the well-chosen lead single “(Reach Up For The) Sunrise”, but those are just the two tracks that trip my trigger the most on the first listen – the whole album really is worth a listen. Who would’ve thought that Duran Duran could muster up a reasonable amount of musical credibility two decades down the road? Now the real trick is to see if they can stay together this time. If they can turn out more albums like this one, they have my permission.

1. (Reach Up For The) Sunrise (3:29)
2. Want You More! (3:43)
3. What Happens Tomorrow (4:09)
4. Astronaut (3:28)
5. Bedroom Toys (3:55)
6. Nice (3:30)
7. Taste The Summer (3:57)
8. Finest Hour (3:59)
9. Chains (4:50)
10. One Of Those Days (3:50)
11. Point Of No Return (5:02)
12. Still Breathing (5:59)

Released by: Sony / Epic
Release date: 2004
Total running time: 49:53