Herald Rating: * * * *
(Atlantic)
Review: Graham Reid
Even unashamed Rod fans approach his albums with trepidation. Will he betray that voice with inferior material? Will he step from soul brother to embarrassingly juvenile bad boy rock or faux-dance?
Human, which finds Rod mostly in r'n'b and ballad mode, largely vindicates the faith, notably in its closing overs. However, before then there's the Slash-splattered title track which proves that the former Guns'n'Roses guitarist desperately needs a day job, and a few barely serviceable tracks by jobbing songwriters (Soul On Soul, Loveless).
But on the way to those generic Stewart tracks at the end — where he becomes Stewart the Soul Balladeer on To Be With You, offers the archetypal self-pitying swagger of Run Back to Your Arms with the singalong chorus, and gets away a stadium-pleasing I Can't Deny It — there are treats aplenty.
There's the gorgeous ballad Smitten written for Rod by Macy Gray, the naggingly addictive Don't Come Around Here with the creaky vocals of Helicopter Girl, where our boy soars off on one of those classic Rod melodies, and If I Had You with Mark Knopfler, which could happily lose the backing vocals.
He closes with another Slash-driven, Faces-styled rocker, a boys-on-the-booze treatment of Prince's Peach. Elsewhere Charlie Parker Loves Me might have been left to Mick Hucknall, and his cover of Curtis Mayfield's It Was Love starts well but loses it in a clunking chorus.
There's nothing here as pivotal as If Only (off Vagabond Heart) or his much disparaged but heartfelt version of Van Morrison's Have I Told You Lately. But comparisons — especially when you have a back catalogue of thirty something years — are odious.
Over multiple plays and by judicious use of the fast-forward button Human is considerably better than we had any right to expect after all this time.
<i>Rod Stewart:</i> Human
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