Search - David Gates :: Falling in Love Again

David Gates' most underrated album?

A. Butterfield | UK | 05/27/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"So here it is at last on CD, only 28 years after it was originally released. I thought it would never happen, but it has. But was it worth the wait?

It's a while since I last heard this album. I realised as soon as I put the CD on that I still knew all the words, all the musical cues, every nuance. The reason for this is that this is an album full of extremely memorable songs.

Take the title track - a mid-tempo ballad very much in the Gates style. It has a terrific melody, and quite an unusual one in the way it twists around. The lyric is perhaps sentimental, but assured, like you'd expect from David Gates, and the vocal is as distinctive as ever. It's intricately put together and played by what is essentially the members of the group Bread, minus James Griffin.

There are some interesting songs on this album. Twentieth Century Man is a piece of social commentary about contemporary life (out of date now of course but never mind) with a very catchy tune. Chingo is about drugs and fame ('All I do for Chingo is serve my sentence well/While Chingo tours the country this old roadie's in his cell), while She Was So Young is a poignant little song about an extra-marital affair between a young girl and an older man.

While I wouldn't say that this is an album devoted to hard-hitting social commentary, the subject matter lifts it above the ten love ballads you might expect from this singer.

Musically, the album is largely mid- or up-tempo. Production is clean and the arrangements good but the sound doesn't have quite the depth of say, his 'First' album. Perhaps the transfer to CD isn't quite up to scratch. It's not bad by any means, just not as good as I was expecting, since on vinyl, it always seemed to sound better than other Gates albums.

You could say that this is quite a dated album, but you couldn't deny, I think, that it has some great melodies, the likes of which you don't hear nowadays. I think it's stood the test of time pretty well and I'm delighted to finally have it on CD."