Singer-Songwriter Philip Rambow!WHATEVER HAPPENED TO PHIL RAMBOW - CD Release June 25 2015 Philip Rambow(RDJ 156005)
Good question. There was a time, through most of the 1970s, when Phil Rambow was the Man Most Likely To, in a variety of guises. With his band the Winkies, he perfected the notion of Glam themed pub rock, and both toured and recorded with Brian Eno – during that brief period when Mr E seriously looked like arm-wrestling Bryan Ferry for pop glory. A John Peel session, a bootleg, and a glorious single catch the collaboration in full fiery flow, and you should go off and listen to all of them now.
Okay, you’re back. From the Winkies, Rambow made it over to New York, to be- come part of that generation spearheading the Max’s Kansas City scene into the era of punk and new wave... his “Night Out” is included on the club’s live album (pause while you play that); back in the UK, he teamed up with Mick Ronson for live shows and sessions, and when Ronson and Hunter cut the first Ellen Foley album, Ram- bow’s writing was among the highlights. (Again.. we’ll wait.)
Two solo albums at the end of the 70s should have propelled him to several shades of stardom; writing with Kirsty MacColl, he created the classic “There’s A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis”; and then... it was probably as early as the mid-1980s that the first voice raised this album’s titular question, and until Rambow resurfaced for live shows a few years back, we’ve been asking it ever since.
And here comes the answer, Rambow’s first solo album since 1981’s Jungle Law, and did you miss him? Yeah!
As a writer, Rambow always was peerless. Early sightings of both Graham Parker and Elvis Costello prompted sharp-eared listeners to compare their songs with his, and though fame and familiarity probably flipped that equation a lot sooner than they should have, still there’s a flourish to the best of Rambow that bears easy compari- son to the rest of their work. File this alongside Parker and the Rumour’s recent re- union, and you can feel the common ground shift ineffably in Rambow’s favor.
The opening “Not Broken” might well be one of the strongest numbers Rambow has ever put his name to, and when you consider that tally includes “Night Out” and “Young Lust” (of Ellen Foley renown), “Fallen” and “Davey’s Blowtorch,” that’s pretty hefty company. But it’s not alone. The quizzical “The Birth of Cool” rumbles along like a rootsy Mark Knopfler; “Big Sky” goes back to Rambow’s folky roots in his na- tive Montreal; “Summertown” has a Stonesy groove that sends shivers down the spine; and just halfway through the twelve songs, you’ve stopped congratulating Rambow for not once leafing back through his catalog, and started grumbling that he didn’t make this a double album.
The then-and-now cover photos remind us how many years have elapsed since the last time we heard a new Phil Rambow album and wondered when the rest of the world was going to catch up with him. But listening to Whatever Happened To..., it could have been just last week. And this is the sound of his tomorrow.